Author: Liam Morton

ESB assessor Lulu Dale led a number of oracy workshops at the WayWord Festival held at Chester’s Storyhouse Theatre, this October half-term.

Celebrating the power of words, the WayWord Festival is designed for young people, offering them an exciting and inspiring programme of events and activities to fire up their imagination. 

Key speakers at the festival included famous poets, Benjamin Zephaniah (pictured with Lulu Dale below), Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Julian Clary and Nick Sharratt.

Lulu, together with curriculum expert, Tara Jones, encouraged learners’ confidence in communication and fostered creativity during the interactive sessions.

The young people were given the opportunity to take to the stage and share in speaking and listening with others in small groups. 

Parents also had the opportunity to talk with Lulu and Tara as they explained the importance of modelling and teaching spoken language and listening skills.

One learner, Alex said: “The workshop helped me to express my mind!”, with another parent, Jade Palmer adding, “The workshop was absolutely fantastic. We were so impressed with Lulu!”

Famous poet, activist, novelist, actor and broadcaster, Benjamin Zephaniah, says about Storyhouse: “I wish I had something like this when I was growing up”.

Lulu adds, “I thoroughly enjoyed leading the fun, interactive sessions and witnessing the huge impact they had on these young people’s oracy skills. With the same goal as ESB assessments, the workshops provided children with a platform and opportunity to speak about what matters the most to them and listen to other members of the group.

“Similar to the workshops, the majority of ESB’s Speech assessments are carried out in groups where learners are assessed individually – replicating real life opportunities for speaking and listening. At ESB, we understand the importance of possessing key communication skills and we’re here to support our learners to develop them. What a fantastic day!”

ESB offers a full range of accredited oracy qualifications, recognised and mapped to the relevant common curriculum requirements. Find out more about our speech qualifications here.

If you believe your learners or young people would benefit from ESB qualifications, we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch to find out whether your centre is eligible for financial support through our 70/70 campaign by emailing business@esbuk.org.

ESB is thrilled to launch our ‘Your Milestone’ Competition!

What better way to celebrate our own special milestone –70th anniversary in 2023 – than by giving our learners the opportunity to showcase their skills and talent.

The competition is open to all Speech and ESOL learners and we encourage them to enter and to get involved. It is not necessary for learners to have completed their assessment prior to entering.

Learners will simply need to create and video themselves delivering their spoken piece (in the form of a speech/poem/rap/piece of drama/story) about an important milestone in their life. The spoken piece should last no longer than 3 minutes.

Learners can submit their video entries from one of the following six categories:

1. Speech (KS1&2)
2. Speech (KS3)
3. Speech (KS4&5)
4. Speech SEND
5. ESOL Entry Level
6. ESOL Level 1 & 2

In addition to sharing and marketing your centres’ achievements on our digital networks, we will also be awarding a £50.00 voucher for 1st prize winners and a £25.00 voucher for 2nd prize winners within each category. All learners who receive a Highly Commended Award will also receive a certificate highlighting their accomplishment.

Centres whose learners are awarded the first prize will also have the additional bonus of receiving a £40.00 voucher. 

Why enter?
The competition will:

• Be a great way to gain recognition and social media exposure for your centre as we will be featuring winners’ videos across all our media channels, including our Website, Twitter and LinkedIn.  
• Hone your learners’ communication skills in a fun and competitive environment.
• Motivate learners and your centre and improve their confidence.
• Give learners the opportunity to enhance their public speaking skills, helping them to excel both within and out of school, giving them a sense of self pride.
• Enable learners to reflect on their achievements to date – promoting positivity and wellbeing.

How to enter?

Please send in your video (taken on a mobile phone is perfectly acceptable) together with your Application Form to ESB’s Communications Officer, Cassie Anderson at cassie.anderson@esbuk.org.

Speech Application Form: please click here to download.
ESOL Application form: please click here to download.

The closing date for submission of entries is Friday 27th January 2023.

Please feel free to download, share and print the poster and display around your centre for all learners to see!

ESB is determined to provide continual support to teachers, helping them to fulfil the potential of all their learners. With this in mind, we are delighted to launch brand new resource packs for the following qualifications:

• ESB Entry Level Awards in Speech (Entry 1, 2 and 3)

• ESB Level 3 Certificate in Speech (Grade 8)

ESB’s new speech resources are designed to provide new and existing centres with ready to use lessons and activities to support teachers and learners along their ESB oracy journey.

We hope these resources will allow new centres to access our qualifications more readily by reducing the workload for centre staff, and by providing clarity on the objectives and criteria in the qualifications.

For our existing centres, who are already experienced and skilled in preparing their learners for ESB qualifications, we hope that these new resources will be a great way to reinforce the great work you already do. The resources cover all four sections of the assessments and aim to address some of the common questions that even our most experienced centres sometimes have.

Finally, we know that when staff move to new positions and pass on responsibility for teaching ESB qualifications, or centre organisers change, it can be challenging to get to grips with a whole new set of specifications. By providing these resources, we hope to ease these transitions.

We are working towards having resources available for all of our speech qualifications. Watch this space!

You can access our Building Confidence in Communication Teacher Resources and other speech resources here.