‘Preach, but if possible keep the words out of it.’ (Pope Francis)

I am sprinting towards the end of a NPQEL qualification, that’s the one in executive leadership. I say sprinting because I walked the first part and trundled off into the changing rooms for a breather about half-way through. I will need to sprint just to finish it on time.

It’s a curious mixture. Practically all the in-person content has been excellent, a combination of residentials, day conferences and peer learning sessions. We have been blessed with some outstanding speakers, Leora Cruddas being one of the most recent. Yet the online learning resources, audits and evaluations are typically peppered with jargon, management speak, at times fitting the category labelled ‘impenetrable’. What do people actually mean?

The trend to research-informed practice can conjure up prose similarly clunky, and the less said about Ofsted reports the better. Because of their agonising navel-gazing about jargon, Ofsted reports now reveal the literary flourish of a typical six-year-old. And if I had £1 for each time someone in public life said ‘in terms of’, I’d be able to retire tomorrow.

Surely it is time to pay attention to our language and make it more accessible, more enjoyable to read. English is such a beautiful language and yet school leaders, consultants and inspectors treat it with such disdain.

So I’m going to start with 10 words or phrases with some suggestions for changing them. In doing so, it might ground us more in our work, connect it more with those communities we serve, as well as respecting the English language a little bit better. Words do matter.

Evaluate.

I like the hidden ‘value’ in the word, but in the recent hyper-competitive and combative climate, evaluations rarely search for the value.

So, give we have a new administration committed to ‘working with the profession’, could we actually use ‘value’, in both its verb and noun form? As in, ‘I’m coming to value your English curriculum’. It still carries a whiff of measurement, but at least it is more positive.

Deliver (also deliverables)

This is a horrible use of language. We don’t deliver a lesson or a curriculum. Just use ‘teach’ please. And any school leader who utters the word ‘deliverables’ should be locked up with Liz Truss for a week as she manically repeats, ‘I WILL DELIVER FOR THE BRITISH PEOPLE!’ over and over again. Postmen and women deliver parcels; we teach lessons.

Move forward

I always think this is a passive/aggressive phrase used by advisors when they really mean ‘improve’. Your new phonics scheme will help you ‘move forward’. No, just say ‘improve’, and be clear.  It’s lazy English and usually can be found in a sentence that contains the aforementioned ‘in terms of’.

Standards

A catch-all term which could mean anything, and is used too liberally by leaders, usually at a distance. It’s too woolly and lazy. I think it gets used by people to mean ‘the way we do things’, in which case it is really ‘culture’. So I prefer ‘behaviours’ rather than standards. You can then go on to specify the types of behaviours that are expected – from pupils, colleagues, community etc.

Our new Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, needs to be clearer when she repeats over and over again the phrase ‘driving up standards’. Does she mean examination results? Or behaviour and manners? Of quality of teaching?

By the way, it is closely related to its cousin, ‘compliance’ – see below.  

Performance

Similarly vague. Does it mean exam results? Well, if so, say it. Or the Year 6 musical? Or the success of the Y6 football team? It should be used for its true meaning, not as a euphemism for academic results or objective judgements.

A quick mention here for ‘performance management’ which was, and remains, a vulgar, technocratic phrase, thankfully now abandoned in favour of the original ‘appraisal’.  

Implementation

Made famous by Ofsted alongside intent and impact. This should be a word or phrase that motivates, one that rallies the troops, gets the heart going. It might be the birth of an exciting plan that will make our school better. But such a thrill gets neutered when a school leader witters on about implementation. An immediate turn-off.

As words, I like ‘execution’ or ‘prosecution’ but they would frighten people, and are too legalistic.  What’s wrong with ‘doing’ which is simple and clear. Even better, link it to achievement.

Much better to hear a school leader say,

‘We are doing all our work that we planned…and so far we have achieved….’

..as opposed to..

‘We have implemented all our planned objectives, and in terms of the impact, we now can evaluate this impact against our matrix of performance indicators.’

Compliance

This is all over many policies now. It sits well with health, safeguarding etc. but does it need to graffiti curriculum and cultural policies?  And when peppering behaviour policies, it really signifies that the school would like to operate more as a prison. Surely support is better, maybe, or as a verb could we change to fulfilling rather than complying?

Oversight

Usually seen in paragraphs about governance. It’s clunky and clumsy and actually has a pejorative meaning (if you don’t believe me, check your dictionary). Just use ‘check’ which everyone understands in both noun and verb forms. Ofsted like ‘check’ and I agree with them on this one.

Competencies

I hate this. It reduces all of us to robots. It sums up the years of Blairite managerialism, surprisingly curated by the Tories. I can only imagine the enthusiasm of all those teacher trainees, to be told after a hard year’s training, ‘Well done, you have met most of our prescribed competencies!’.

What’s wrong with proficiencies, or skills or the more biblical talents? But not competencies please.

Intervention

I remember hearing this when I’d just become a headteacher. It grated then, and it still does now. The word, and its equally awful plural, is ubiquitous across the system. Whether to ‘boost’ the knowledge of pupils who have fallen behind, or whether to send in help to a struggling school, it is liberally sprinkled across a multitude of documents.

I hate it. It always makes me think of physical force.

Just use ‘help’, or ‘support’?

So there’s my ten. Any others to offer?

(In terms of…)