This week Jonathan Noakes, the director of teaching and learning at Eton, said state schools should be doing more to improve their pupils’ public speaking skills by setting up debating societies. How can students gain confidence in speaking to an audience if this opportunity isn’t available at school? Four state-educated public speakers explain how they found their voice.
‘I’ve had to learn how to take up space’
Saima Mir, author
I’m really strange in that I like public speaking and actually prefer it to general chit-chat. I’ve had to do so much publicity around my books that I’ve become used to it. You know what works and what doesn’t. I’m an introvert, but when I’m on stage it feels like a performance. I love that people have come out of choice to see me. It makes me feel alive.
I’ve thought a lot about why this is. I’m nearly 50 and I think I care less now. I also believe that what I have to say is important, as pompous as that sounds. That said, I wasn’t always good at it when I started out. I used to get very nervous. I went to state school and we didn’t learn how to debate or present ourselves publicly at all. At the mosque we had to give short speeches from the age of six but I wasn’t very good at it.
I worked at the BBC and had to do pieces to camera, which was the training that did it. I learned that so much of public speaking is storytelling. When I’m giving a talk, I always think of it as having a beginning, middle and end, to make sure that I hook people in.
One of the things I’ve had to learn is how to take up space. To know that I am allowed to be on that stage and what I have to say is of interest. That is the key skill that young people need to be given.
‘Chances are there will be a teacher who has a passion for it’
Carla Denyer, MP for Bristol Central and co-leader of the Green party
While I was at secondary school in Fleet in Hampshire, a new teacher joined, Mr Horgan, who had just graduated from Oxford. He, along with another teacher, Ms Lonsdale, set up an extracurricular programme for promising students, including debating and public speaking. It was key in building my confidence. We entered competitions and were almost always the only state school taking part.
My advice to young people is that if you don’t have these opportunities at your school, the chances are there will be a teacher who has a passion for it, but thinks there isn’t the demand, or hasn’t quite got around to it. See if you can find someone to help you set it up.
I definitely get nervous in the run-up to big speeches and debates, then I tend to get into my stride once I’m doing them. For the first of the TV election debates, I was incredibly nervous walking on to the stage and during my first answer. Then I realised, “OK, I’m at least as intelligent as the other people on this stage, there’s nothing for me to worry about,” and I got into my flow.
My colleagues will tell you, perhaps rolling their eyes, that I like to be really prepared for a debate. I want to know the issues inside out and be confident that I know the answers to the questions that are likely to come up. Although, very often, I get the best feedback on the bits that were not in my notes at all, but came straight from the heart.
‘Authenticity is the most important thing’
Alexander Crossman, headteacher of the London Academy of Excellence sixth form, Stratford, London
I am pretty sure we didn’t do any debating or public speaking at my state school in the West Midlands. I think I learned how to do it from lecturers at university: how to engage an audience and convey complex or subtle ideas through forces of rhetoric and personality.
Authenticity is the most important thing. I’m very fortunate that I’m almost always asked to speak about things I genuinely care about. You can spend a lot of time worrying about where you’re standing or the intonation of your voice, but, if you want to really connect with an audience, nothing is as important as meaning what you say.
At the LAE we have a wide range of opportunities for public speaking, including debating clubs, student societies and we participate in Model United Nations. Our assemblies are almost exclusively student-delivered: young people hearing from one another is, ultimately, much more impactful than hearing from older, crustier people like me. But the thing that is fundamental is the quality of dialogue in the classroom and encouraging students to express themselves clearly and appropriately using scholarly or professional language.
There is an element of overcoming impostor syndrome. Very often young people, particularly those from lower-income backgrounds, are reluctant to speak up because they think everybody else knows more than they do or are more articulate than they are. Actually, pretty much everybody has some level of insecurity about those things, and that is normal.
‘Take a deep breath and go for it’
James Oliveira-Agnew, barrister at Lamb Building chambers
A lot of barristers have a natural affinity with performing. Most of us are failed actors or rock stars who had to find something else to do. I enjoy this aspect of it. We had a very good drama department at our state school in Hamble near Southampton, which helped me with speaking in public, projecting my voice and learning lines. But debating, putting your point across, listening to arguments and thinking on your feet wasn’t something that I learned at school.
If you’re looking to go into law as a career, especially at the bar, then not having been given those opportunities may well make you think it’s not for you.
One of the issues that people have with the bar is that they feel excluded before they even start because they haven’t got that confidence to stand up and talk. When you’re at bar school you do mock trials, but it is in a classroom setting. Being able to stand up in court in front of experienced judges, counsel and a jury can be very daunting. The first time you do a trial and make a speech is petrifying – everybody’s staring at you.
Nobody has the ability to stand up and give convincing legal arguments in court the first time they do it, no matter where they are from. My advice is to take a deep breath and go for it. If it all goes wrong, no one’s going to remember, and you can learn from it and move on.
