Government To Teach Children The Skill Humans Have Had Since Before Writing Was Invented

Britain has discovered speech.

After centuries of using it to conduct wars, deliver sermons, bicker in government and order things at the bar, the nation has formally recognised that the ability to articulate oneself out loud is, in fact, a skill worth teaching children.

Education Secretary Lucy Powell announced on Thursday that “oracy” — the technical term for talking, rebranded for a government press release — will be given equal status to reading and writing in the English curriculum, including assessment up to GCSE level.

Speaking and listening were stripped from English GCSE final marks in 2013 after teachers were found to be inflating grades — rendering verbal communication officially too dangerous to measure. Children have since been assessed on their ability to write about speaking, rather than their ability to do it, which is the kind of solution that makes complete sense if you have never had to speak to anyone.

Powell said that in a new age of artificial intelligence, it was vital to invest in the skills that make us human. Speaking, it turns out, is one of these skills. It has been available since approximately 150,000 BC.

The shadow education secretary called the plans Orwellian despite probably never reading Orwell. Baroness Spielman, former head of Ofsted, managed to blame Labour for offering the worst of all worlds. A professor at Buckingham University warned that hope would not get pupils through exams, a sentence he delivered out loud without apparent irony.

Children, who have been speaking since approximately age two, will be assessed on it from 2028. They will likely have been doing it, largely unassessed, since around eighteen months old.