Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help support children in schools to develop their vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and listening skills.

The department recognises the importance of speaking and listening skills, which has been very clearly set out by the recent Curriculum and Assessment Review. As part of our English curriculum reform, we will make sure that communication skills inherent in curriculum subjects are more clearly expressed through revised programmes of study. We will revise the English and drama programmes of study to add more clarity and specificity in speaking and listening, as well as ensuring that the reformed English language GCSE focusses on the features and use of language as a form of communication. We will also create a new oracy framework to sit alongside the national curriculum that will support primary teachers to help their pupils become confident, fluent speakers, as well as a new secondary oracy, reading and writing framework, which will enable secondary teachers to connect and embed all three of those vital skills in each of their subjects as part of a whole school strategy.

We are also considering whether and how the sequencing of grammatical content in the curriculum should be changed, to enable pupils to master concepts and use them in context.