Oracy is an important skill and we should be encouraging young people to also hold onto their accents - Jayne Dowle

Both these girls want to work for the NHS. The second girl was telling me excitedly she was going to take a vocational college course with the intention of becoming a midwife, an ambition her mother held until it became incompatible with taking a job, any job, as long as it put food on the table.

The first girl looked at the second girl haughtily. “Well, I want to go into nursing too,” she said. “But I’m doing A levels.” And in that sentence, this young woman crystallised everything that Sir Keir Starmer was talking about last week when he delivered a strong speech promising that a Labour government would “tear down” obstacles to opportunity, which he is dubbing the “class ceiling”.

"There's something more pernicious here, a pervasive idea, a barrier in our collective mind that narrows our ambitions for working class children and says - sometimes with subtlety, sometimes to your face - this isn't for you," he said.

And he is absolutely right. He took a swipe at the last Labour government as he spoke, pointing out that under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown not enough was done to eradicate the “snobbery” in education.

Central to Starmer’s plans to create equal opportunities for all is his plan to improve children’s speaking skills. In a passionate article for a newspaper to accompany his policy speech, he explained he wants “oracy” to play an important part in Labour’s plans for a reformed school curriculum.

Oracy is a skill that can and must be taught, he argues. It’s not just about good public speaking and debating skills, but how to form thoughts into words, create a cogent argument and teach young people how to choose language with discernment; how to read an audience and forge meaningful social connections; how to use expressions and body language to convey meaning.

Above all else it’s about finding your voice, he concludes. And on this, I cannot agree more. I taught in a Yorkshire university for almost 10 years, meeting hundreds of young people. A regular part of the public relations modules I delivered was “presentations”. I’ll be honest. Most of the students, many of whom were local, dreaded this public-facing task, especially the boys on the sports journalism course, who would look at their feet, mumble and blush.

By the third year I hope that I managed to persuade them that it was perfectly OK to have a Yorkshire accent – many of them would feel embarrassed that they couldn’t talk ‘posh’ enough – as long as they spoke relatively slowly and looked their audience in the eye as they did so.

I used to cite the example of BBC journalist Dan Johnson, who grew up a few doors up the road from where I lived then in Barnsley. Currently the West and South West of England correspondent, Dan has now worked all over the world, including a stint in Washington. However, when I met him, he had recently graduated and was working for BBC Radio Sheffield.

In our region too many young people are growing up thinking that if they can’t speak in a particular way they have no hope. This fear can be so paralysing that they end up being too terrified to open their mouths at all. If a new approach to speaking in public can become a part of the curriculum, I am all for it. The ability to communicate clearly and confidently is taken as a given by those who attend fee-paying schools, and this privilege should be afforded to every child, no matter what their background is.

Attend a university open day and you’ll notice that most of the young people asking questions will be from a certain kind of school; money can certainly buy this kind of laisse-faire.

There is a speaking element to the English GCSE, but Sir Keir is right, giving kids the confidence to talk should start way earlier in school.

If children don’t have the words to argue, or the confidence to string a persuasive argument together, it makes them feel as if they are constantly on the back foot. Open your mouth and speak and you can open up the world, as Sir Keir, the son of a nurse and a toolmaker, knows only too well.​​​​​​​