@beaconsfieldhighschool
25 June 2026
Congrats to Ms Allen who fought off tough competition to be awarded the Innovation Award for her oracy initiative at last week's Grammar School Heads' Association Awards. Ms Allen led the initiative with our Oracy Lead, Mrs Grantham.
The GSHA awards recognise member schools that have pioneered exceptional, trailblazing initiatives in student enrichment, careers education, and mental health and wellbeing. Entitled Oracy as Culture: Embedding "Speak Like Confident People" through a whole-school framework, Ms Allen explains the issue her project addressed:
"......our curriculum is driven by a vision to develop girls of character - curious in thought, courageous in action and confident in themselves. While our students achieve highly academically, quality assurance lesson visit write-ups revealed a recurring linguistic pattern: students frequently prefaced correct answers with qualifiers such as, "This is probably wrong..." despite secure subject knowledge. This indicated a confidence gap not in cognition, but in articulation."
As you can imagine, Ms Bond is incredibly proud:
"There was fierce competition, but they absolutely chose the right nominee! Ms Allen delivered a phenomenal speech, firmly putting Becky High on the map for innovation in oracy. What made me most proud, though, was seeing so much other incredible practice highlighted together with the collaboration and innovation demonstrated by staff and students, across the school at all levels!"