Astra/BNU Conference on Educational Priorities 2025

Astra/BNU Conference on Educational Priorities 2025

13 June saw over 120 trainee teachers from ITT providers across Buckinghamshire come together at Aylesbury’s Waterside Theatre and Buckinghamshire New University campus for this year’s Educational Priorities in Buckinghamshire Conference. Our conference this year focused on Oracy and its uses across educational landscape.

We had fantastic keynotes from Harry Hudson, Head of History at West London Free School with his speech, ‘Practising what we preach: the awesome power of teacher-talk’ and Daniel Thomas, Assistant Headteacher at School 21 with his speech ‘Cinderella shall go to the ball' - Making the case for Oracy.

15 workshops across the day covered topics ranging from boosting oracy in the early years, transforming behaviour management through oracy and oracy through adaptive teaching, through to oracy through tutor time and a wonderfully titled ‘Brah, yer get me tho:’ oracy, slang and gender in the classroom, to name just a few. It was fantastic to see teachers and leaders from schools across Buckinghamshire facilitate these sessions and we are very grateful for the time and energy they put into these workshops.

Many thanks to all involved in this conference and we have hopefully given our attendees food for thought and some practical oracy applications for their ECT roles starting in September

Below are just a few quotes from the attendees:

Very engaging, I got some takeaways I can use in my subject.

Great examples of oracy in action.

Excellent preparation- lots of helpful info packed into a very short amount of time!

Fantastic speech! Very well spoken and shared great experiences.