North Liverpool Academy
1,327 students on roll
50% of students eligible for free school meals
Mixed, secondary school
Liverpool
North Liverpool Academy have seen improvements in their NGRT scores, a standardised reading test, and PASS surveys, which look at social and emotional wellbeing.
North Liverpool Academy noticed through test results that their incoming students had better numerical literacy than they did literacy or oracy skills, and decided to become a Voice 21 Oracy School. Initially, the school started working on tier one, two, and three vocabulary, and used Voice 21 resources and techniques including teaching key vocabulary through talk to improve students’ vocabulary, while also developing oracy-rich classrooms in which students had opportunities to both hear and use new vocabulary in context.
The students now have more confidence in how they feel about themselves as learners.
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North Liverpool Academy has worked to ensure that oracy is adapted across different subjects, and that there are oracy champions across the school who are able to drive change in their own areas.
For students, especially those in Years 7, 8 and 9, the school has seen improvements in student confidence and perceptions of their perceptions of their academic ability, according to the results of the PASS survey. Additionally, by using an oracy approach for improving vocabulary, the school has seen a rise in students’ standardised reading scores. Teachers have also observed that students are better at expressing themselves in the classroom, and that they are now more likely to give a confident and well-structured response. Because North Liverpool Academy is a secondary school, their oracy intervention was subject-specific. In English, students regularly discuss texts, while in art students use presentational talk to explain the choices and thinking behind the things that they’ve made. The Maths department took a different approach, and regularly has students divide into groups to discuss how to reach solutions to problems.
How Voice 21 has supported North Liverpool Academy
Voice 21 training has provided a shared understanding of what oracy is throughout the school, by both staff and students. For example, understanding the distinction between exploratory and presentational talk has been beneficial for students as it has allowed for more productive conversations and discussions. The training provided by Voice 21 is simple enough that every student and teacher can understand it, while also being highly effective.