When education policy debates which subjects matter most, the conversation usually centres on STEM: science, technology, engineering, and maths. These are the skills that underpin economic productivity, technical innovation, and long-term competitiveness. Equipping young people with them is a strategic priority for schools, government, and employers alike.
However, alongside these technical skills, young people crucially need the human skills.
The young person who leaves school with strong science and mathematics qualifications and who cannot explain their thinking clearly, hold a position when it is challenged, listen carefully to a counter-argument, or persuade a group of people who disagree with them, is going to find that a significant proportion of their technical capability is inaccessible to the world around them.
The missing variable is communication.
The gap that exam results don’t capture
A-levels, degree classifications, and technical qualifications measure what young people know and what they can demonstrate in a structured test. They do not measure whether those young people can turn their knowledge into something useful in the real environments where they will actually work.
The CBI’s annual education and skills surveys find, repeatedly, that the capabilities employers most struggle to find in graduates and school leavers are not technical in nature. They are the ability to communicate clearly, reason through a problem under pressure, collaborate with people who hold different views, and adapt when things do not go as planned.
These are gaps in the fundamentals of human communication.
Research by the Education Endowment Foundation found that targeted oracy interventions – teaching students explicitly to speak, listen, and argue – produce measurable improvements not only in communication ability but in academic performance across subjects. The two things are connected in ways that curriculum design has historically underweighted.
Why communication lessons are a must
The reason communication sits at the centre of education, rather than being one subject among many, is that it shapes how everything else gets used.
A student who cannot articulate their scientific reasoning will struggle in university laboratory settings, technical interviews, and professional environments where explaining method and uncertainty is part of the job.
A student who has never had to defend an argument against challenge will find the first moment of real professional scrutiny harder than it needs to be.
A student who has never practised listening with the intent to understand – rather than simply to respond — will miss things that more attentive colleagues will catch.
None of this is about natural confidence. Confidence in communication is built through practice, with feedback, over time.
The students who appear effortlessly articulate have usually had more practice, not a different kind of brain.
This matters for equity as well as performance. The young people with the fewest opportunities to practise formal communication – structured argument, reasoned response, composed public speaking – tend to be those from less privileged backgrounds. The gap compounds. By the time students enter higher education or employment, the communication confidence gap between those who have practised it consistently and those who haven’t is wide and consequential.
What building communication looks like in practice
Building communication capability is not the same as teaching students oracy.
Presentation is one application. The underlying skill is broader: the ability to construct a clear argument, anticipate counterarguments, listen carefully enough to respond to what is actually being said, and maintain composure when the exchange becomes uncomfortable.
These capabilities are built through structured practice in high-stakes, low-consequences environments. The classroom is exactly the right place for this, provided it is designed to require genuine engagement rather than performative participation.
The most effective approaches involve live debate formats, structured discussion tasks, and regular practice in responding to challenges. Knowing how to argue is far less useful than actually arguing – under observation, with feedback, often enough that the habits become second nature.
The schools that take communication seriously tend to produce students who are more engaged learners across the board. When young people can express their thinking clearly and hear it taken seriously by others, their relationship with the material they are studying changes. They stop being passive recipients of information and start being active participants in working out what it means.
How Debate Mate approaches this
Debate Mate works in schools with exactly this in mind. Our programmes are built around structured debate formats that put students in the position of having to construct an argument, respond to challenge, and think clearly under pressure – in front of their peers, with real stakes attached to doing it well.
The students who go through these programmes consistently report the same things: greater confidence in formal situations, an easier relationship with academic writing because they have practised making arguments out loud, and a clearer sense of how to hold their own in the kinds of professional conversations they can see in their futures.
These are learnable skills. They belong in the curriculum alongside science and mathematics, taken seriously as a fundamental part of what education is for, rather than treated as an optional enrichment activity for the students who seem to need it most.
If you would like to explore what a Debate Mate programme could mean for your school, get in touch.
Debate Mate Schools works with secondary schools and colleges across the UK to build communication, critical thinking, and debate skills. Get in touch at debatematelive.com.
