Let’s Talk at Transition: Building belonging and engagement through oracy across the Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3 transition

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https://my.chartered.college/impact_article/lets-talk-at-transition-building-belonging-and-engagement-through-oracy-across-the-key-stage-2-to-key-stage-3-transition/

https://voice21.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/V21-LTAT-v7-web-1.pdf

Kathleen McBride, Interim Head Of Learning, Voice 21, UK

Introduction

Oracy education is instrumental in supporting positive experiences and outcomes for students throughout their time in school – including across transition points (Voice 21, 2023). The transition between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 is a particularly significant educational milestone, one that continues to be the focus of policymakers and school leaders.

The Curriculum and Assessment Review final report (DfE, 2025) highlights that developing an effective transition requires sustained effort to ensure that students have access to a cohesive and appropriately challenging Key Stage 3 curriculum. This echoes the findings of Ofsted’s ‘The wasted years?’ report (2015), which, a decade earlier, urged schools to prioritise transition.

Recent evidence suggests that while the sector has retained its interest in improving transition, there is still work to be done. ImpactEd Group’s national study on student engagement (2025) shows a sharp decline in engagement during Year 7, further highlighting the importance of developing approaches that strengthen students’ participation, confidence and sense of belonging during the transition period.

Responding to this landscape, Let’s Talk at Transition set out to investigate the potential of oracy to support successful transition experiences. The project sought to understand the perspectives of teachers and students, develop shared approaches to oracy across primary and secondary settings, and identify effective practices for supporting learners as they move between phases of education.

Research aim

The project was guided by the following research question:

What impact does an oracy-focused transition model have on:

• teachers’ oracy practice?
• students’ experiences of transition?

Methodology

Let’s Talk at Transition, funded by funded by Worcestershire County Council, involved seven schools across Worcestershire – six secondary schools and one primary school – who had not previously worked with Voice 21. The project adopted a mixed-methods approach to researching the impact of developing oracy-rich transition practices over an 18-month period.

Data was collected through multiple sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of both implementation and impact:

• teacher interviews
• Year 7 student focus groups exploring views on transition and oracy
• teacher surveys measuring confidence and understanding of oracy
• student surveys collecting perceptions of oracy
• school-level attendance and engagement indicators
• observations and reflections gathered during implementation activities.

Findings

Development of teacher practice

The project led to an increase in teachers’ understanding of classroom talk – most notably, exploratory talk (Barnes, 1992), which is characterised by participation, querying and elaboration (reasoning), attributes that are associated with improved academic outcomes (Howe et al., 2019). Participants reported greater awareness of the features of productive educational discussion and, crucially, increased confidence in managing classroom talk.

Oracy survey results showed a 28.6 percentage point increase in teachers’ confidence with implementing oracy in their classrooms. These surveys were conducted with all teaching staff in project schools, showing impact beyond the teachers in the project group.

Promisingly, this increase in confidence signals a culture shift in participating schools, several of which had existing practices such as ‘silent classrooms’ that reduced scope for classroom talk. These schools shifted from viewing talk as an aspect of behaviour management to seeing it as an essential tool for thinking and learning, one that fosters community, reasoning and the co-construction of knowledge (Resnick et al., 2018).

As well as developing oracy practice, Let’s Talk at Transition strengthened relationships between primary and secondary schools. By involving teachers who aren’t typically involved in existing transition activity (i.e. transition leads), more teachers in the participating secondaries gained an effective understanding of primary curricula and existing oracy provision. As a result, teachers were able to build on students’ prior experiences more meaningfully during their planning for both transition and the Year 7 curriculum. This collaboration between phases supported continuity in expectations, language and pedagogical approaches supporting oracy, helping students to experience a more coherent transition.

Improved attendance

Two participating schools reported an impact on attendance. One school recorded a rise in Year 7 attendance from 88 per cent in the previous year to 92 per cent during the project year. While staff acknowledged that multiple factors contribute to attendance outcomes, they identified the systematic embedding of oracy within teaching and learning as the single significant change introduced during the project year.

Increased participation and inclusion

Throughout the project, teachers observed increased student participation in learning, particularly among students who had previously been reluctant to contribute in lessons. The development of talk-rich classroom environments appeared to increase students’ confidence and willingness to engage with learning activities. Participating teachers reported that students increasingly recognised the value of discussion and felt more included within classroom communities. Across schools, 89 per cent of teachers agreed that oracy helped students to develop their love of learning; one teacher captured students’ enthusiasm for oracy when they excitedly asked her whether they’d be doing more of the ‘talky talky stuff’ in their next lesson!

Schools consistently identified oracy as a powerful tool for strengthening students’ sense of belonging. Teachers reported that well-planned opportunities for discussion enabled students to share experiences, build relationships with peers and staff, and develop confidence in unfamiliar environments. By explicitly teaching oracy skills and providing regular opportunities for purposeful talk, schools created more inclusive learning environments in which participation is encouraged and valued. While the data set for this is small, the improvements in attendance reported by some participating schools can be viewed as an indicator of increased feelings of belonging for students in those settings. This is particularly promising given the aforementioned national dip in engagement that occurs in Year 7.

Project outcomes

Establishing a new vision for transition 

A significant outcome of the project was the shift in teachers’ conceptualisation of transition. At the outset, transition tended to be viewed as a discrete series of activities occurring at the end of Year 6 and the beginning of Year 7. Over time, participants increasingly interpreted transition as an extended phase that continued throughout the whole of Year 7. In some participating schools, as many as 35 per cent of new Year 7s are not deemed ‘secondary ready’, and participating teachers felt strongly that an extended transition phase would benefit students who need longer to develop the social, emotional and academic skills needed to thrive in secondary education.

This broader understanding empowered schools to redesign existing transition activities and integrate them into a longer-term strategy for the development of students’ oracy skills across Year 7. Rather than serving solely as induction and orientation events, transition activities became the gateway to establishing learning behaviours, building relationships and developing communication skills that would continue to be nurtured throughout secondary education.

Developing a framework for oracy and transition

To facilitate this renewed vision of transition, participants contributed to the development of a framework designed to support schools beyond the project to embed oracy within the planning and delivery of transition – a framework that aligned with the underpinning principles of a high-quality oracy education as articulated in the Oracy Benchmarks (Voice 21, 2019):

1. Delivering an oracy-rich introduction to secondary school: Schools placed oracy at the heart of students’ introduction to secondary by creating discussion-based transition experiences that encouraged reflection, storytelling and personal expression. Activities such as students writing and revisiting spoken letters to their future selves enabled teachers to develop a deeper understanding of students’ hopes, concerns and support needs, while encouraging reflection throughout Year 7.
2. Teaching oracy explicitly: Participating schools demonstrated the importance of identifying dedicated opportunities for the explicit teaching of Oracy Framework skills (Voice 21 and University of Cambridge, 2018), understanding that both teachers and students needed low-stakes opportunities to develop oracy routines. Structured tutor time programmes provided an ideal space for project schools to continue building awareness and understanding of oracy beyond transition activities.
3. Developing oracy in subjects: Effective talk supports disciplinary thinking (Moorghen, 2023). Understanding how oracy supports subject aims is key to incorporating meaningful and authentic opportunities for talk in different subject areas. In project schools, Year 7 lesson and curriculum planning were revised to include regular opportunities for discussion, enabling students to articulate reasoning, test ideas and deepen understanding across the curriculum.
4. Creating platforms for oracy: Developing a strong culture of oracy across a school includes providing varied and engaging platforms for all students to express themselves and their ideas. Schools enhanced opportunities for students to speak to authentic audiences through events and performances beyond the classroom. These experiences enabled students to develop and apply a wide range of oracy skills in meaningful contexts. 
5. Providing professional development in oracy: Sustained professional development is a crucial factor in the successful implementation of oracy education, and yet recent polling suggests that not all teachers have access to training in oracy; research conducted in January 2025 by Teacher Tapp highlighted that just 28 per cent of secondary teachers polled had received CPD (continued professional development) on oracy in the last two years at the time of polling. By prioritising whole-school and departmental professional development, project schools reported increased teacher confidence – by the end of the project year, 80 per cent of teachers in project schools felt confident with their knowledge and understanding of oracy – and greater consistency in the use of oracy-focused pedagogies.

Conclusion

Let’s Talk at Transition demonstrates the potential of oracy to support students during the move from primary to secondary education. Through improved teacher confidence, increased student participation and engagement, stronger cross-phase collaboration and evidence of enhanced attendance, the project highlights the value of embedding oracy within transition planning.

The resulting framework provides schools with a practical, evidence-informed model for developing belonging, curriculum confidence and engagement throughout Year 7 and beyond. Future implementation and research should continue to explore how sustained investment in oracy at transition contributes to both student wellbeing and academic success at this pivotal time in their education.

• Barnes D (1992) The role of talk in learning. In: Norman K (ed) Thinking Voices: The Work of the National Oracy Project. London: Hodder & Stoughton, pp. 123–128.
• Department for Education (DfE) (2025) Curriculum and Assessment Review: Final report: Building a world-class curriculum for all. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/690b96bbc22e4ed8b051854d/Curriculum_and_Assessment_Review_final_report_-_Building_a_world-class_curriculum_for_all.pdf (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Howe C, Hennessy S, Mercer N et al. (2019) Teacher–student dialogue during classroom teaching: Does it really impact on student outcomes? Journal of the Learning Sciences 28(4–5): 462–512.
• ImpactEd Group (2025) Mind the engagement gap: A national study of pupil engagement in England’s schools. Available at: www.impactedgroup.uk/resources/report-mind-the-engagement-gap (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Moorghen A (2023) Is every teacher a teacher of oracy? English: Journal of the English Association 72(278): 126–130.
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• Voice 21 and University of Cambridge (2018) The Oracy Skills Framework and glossary. Available at: https://oracycambridge.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/The-Oracy-Skills-Framework-and-Glossary.pdf (accessed 12 August 2026).