Chip Colquhoun

Storylines Volume VI Issue 1

Chip Colquhoun A Telling Difference

importance of storytelling and reading in education”, one could predict his emphasis. Still, could inviting the Minister to an oral event hold merit?

Since October 2013, I’ve tried organising the world’s first controlled study of storytelling in Is the government education. There are plenty of qualitative studies, collecting feedopening up to back from teachers and/or promoting oral children after a storyteller’s visit. However, these studies have no storytelling in controls – i.e. similar groups of children who didn’t enjoy storyeducation? telling. Lack of scientific method National Storytelling Week is has so far prevented oral storyperhaps the SfS’ greatest achieve- telling making the leap from ment, marked by institutions and curriculum recommendation to personalities countrywide. Many, statutory requirement – policy however, show little awareness of makers only accept quantitative NSW’s origins or (occasionally) its evidence. oral focus. For instance, Duchess Frustratingly, finding control Camilla celebrated NSW with the groups proved tricky. Teachers Literacy Trust to promote intrinsically knew children would reading. benefit from storytelling, so were So when the Department for unwilling to let any miss out. Even Education contacted the SfS to promising storytelling for the ask if they knew an event where control groups immediately after Schools Minister Nick Gibb could the study wasn’t persuasive: this share a speech on “the put pressure on their timetables.

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Storylines Volume VI Issue 1 But offering a Ministerial visit in return for data? That had weight. St Andrew’s Primary in Soham gobbled the bait, and so a month of storytelling would culminate in a NSW event attended by Mr Gibb – with research and control assessments investigating storytelling’s effectiveness along the way. On 2nd February, Mr Gibb arrived to a scene reminiscent of a Moroccan market. Classrooms housed storytelling tents, in which children orally shared tales of their own creation with peers, teachers, parents, and councillors. 90 children shared stories this way, with over twice that number in spellbound audiences. Q&A revealed he’d been profoundly affected by the extraordinary engagement and confidence of the young storytellers. While his speech suggested reading as the pathway to strong learning, Mr Gibb acknowledged oral storytelling as the pathway to reading. This was also the angle taken by ITV Anglia News, who eschewed Duchess Camilla’s event in order to focus their NSW report solely on ours. So was it worth it? Given more schools are now keen to join our study, and that Mr Gibb requested regular updates on the study’s progress, the answer is: “Yes”. And since the study’s already seeing the research groups rapidly out performing the control groups, we’ll soon deliver a firm message deep within the DfE: oral story telling has proven benefits for children’s learning, and should therefore be a curriculum requirement. Watch this space!

As expected, reading dominated Mr Gibb’s prepared speech (see URL below) – but the subsequent Chip Colquhoun Storyteller https://www.gov.uk/government/ speeches/the-importance-ofstorytelling

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