Christabel Burniston

Christabel Burniston MBE (12 September 1909 – 27 October 2006) founded the English Speaking Board (ESB). She was a pioneer in oral communication and the language arts, who championed the importance of spoken English as a vital life skill, describing it as enabling: "effective relationships with others, and insight into human relationships".

Early life Born in Leeds, Sarah Elizabeth Christabel Hyde (the Christabel she later used as her first name was in honour of Christabel Pankhurst) was the youngest of four sisters. Her father, an insurance worker, came from an East Riding farming background. After the war, she became County Drama Organiser for Lancashire, a role that saw her travelling around the north-west adjudicating at drama festivals and holding drama seminars, workshops and summer schools. During this time she also became a founder member of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators (GoDA). In 1950, after the collapse of her wartime marriage to Stanley Burniston, she moved to Southport with her young daughter Elizabeth and started the North-West School of Speech and Drama.

Burniston saw the candidate – rather than the examiner – as the authority in the examination. Other professional organisations recognised the merits of this approach and were later to reflect ESB's ideas – notably the 1963 Newsom Report Half Our Future. Under her stewardship, the English Speaking Board became ESB (International) in the 1960s, extending its influence as Burniston took the board's philosophy to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Malta and Canada. In 1978, she received an MBE for services to education.

Burniston assumed a new role as ESB President in 1981. In 1996, she was awarded a fellowship of the College of Preceptors and later was among the first to gain a Society of Teachers of Speech and Drama (STSD) fellowship.

In 2006, she was among the high-profile signatories to a letter in a national newspaper calling for a national debate about how best to meet children's emotional and social needs in the 21st century.

Legacy Today ESB promotes and assesses spoken English in schools, colleges, the business world, special needs environments, prisons and, increasingly, among those who do not speak English as a first language.

Published works Choral Speech for schools, colleges and festivals, Burniston, Christabel and Oliver Coligny de Champleur Ellis, (Poetry Lovers' Fellowship, 1952) What is spoken English? Can it be examined in general education? (English Speaking Board, 1963) Spoken English in Further Education (Methuen, 1966) Speech for Life (Oxford, 1966) Speech for Life (Pergamon, 1967) Creative Oral Assessment; its scope and stimulus (Pergamon, 1968) Into the life of things; An exploration of language through verbal dynamics, Bell, Jocelyn and Burniston, Christabel, (Lowes, 1972) Spoken English in Advanced Education (English Speaking Board (International), 1974) The Case for Community Service and the Young Adult (The Board, 1976) , 9780950278933 Creative Oral Assessment: A Handbook for teachers and examiners of Oral Skills (T.Snape & Co, 1982) Life in a Liberty Bodice (Highgate Publications, 1991) The Brass and the Velvet (Book Guild Limited, 2002) / 1-85776-772-1