Edubabble

[itwassolongago]

An occasional thread in which I plan to note examples, not of the odd misspelling or grammatical error, but of sustained poor usage amongst those charged with the education of our children.

I hope others will join in.

Ahem:
"Senior Leadership Team". A term crying out for parody. Is there a junior leadership team or indeed any other kind of leadership team? I don't think so. In which case "Leadership Team" should suffice.

And then of course, "gifted and talented". This one always reminds me of an ice-cream flavour: I'll have one rhum&raisin, one cookies&cream and one gifted&talented please.
Either "gifted" and "talented" are supposed to mean the same thing, in which case one should be eliminated, or they are supposed to mean two different things, in which case it makes sense to talk about a gifted child or a talented child but not a gifted- and - talented child.

I dread to think how to how many pages schools' letters would run if they had to provide an explanation of everything.

There are many educational terms which schools would probably not use in a letter to parents, but I expect that they use ones which they assume to be fairly common knowledge, expecting that parents who are unfamiliar with them will ask someone. Or failing that, Google it. It seems very unfair to criticise a school for poor communication when it is simply using terms which are commonly used by practically every school in the country. 'PHSE' has existed for donkey's years.

Oh and there certainly is a LOT of 'edubabble' in schools, but it is pretty much confined to staff training sessions and meetings, based on the results of daft educational research projects.

ok.

Two possibilities here.

Either I came across as a bit of a tit in my OP and wound people up, in which case they're just going to want to disagree with anything I say.

Or teachers actually think it is ok to send out letters talking about "PHSE" without explanation on a piece of paper the sole purpose of which was to communicate with parents.

As the latter is just too horrible to contemplate, I shall pronounce myself a tit go find myself a festive bra. I will watch my OPs more carefully next time and I'm glad for the existence of anonymous internet forums.

itwassolongago
Google is your friend,
if you hear a term you do not understand, look it up
its called learning rather than expecting to be spoon fed

I hope you teach your children to seek out and understand the meanings of new words and phrases

I simply don't believe you really think that Talkinpeace.

I blame my bra-like OP.

No competent teacher believes that a newsletter sent to tell parents what their children have been doing is best riddled with internal jargon that parents' job is to look up.

You are too intelligent to believe that and I'd be insulting your intelligence if I believed otherwise.

PSHE is not "jargon"
its been part of the National Curriculum for many, many years and is integral to the timetable in primary schools
if you CBA to look it up
you're in for a nasty shock when you have to start looking at the UM on GCSE modules and deciding between Foundation and Higher
let alone the difference between QCA, SAT and CAT

But PSHE is not "internal jargon". It has been part of the national curriculum for over 14 years, there is a professional association called the PSHE Association in its abreviated form it is never called The Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education Association simply because it is a bit of a mouthful,and it is certainly not common at all to hear the full title.

Cross post!

This thread is funny.
PHSE is just as usual as PE or RE. It is not jargon.

God help you if you've ever got to get your head around lesson plans annotatrd with SMSC, FSM, Ever6, SEN, LAC, SA+, MLD, SPLD, ODD, SATs, CATs, GCSEs...the list goes on and on.

No, OP, you didn't sound like a tit. You sounded like someone who was feeling narky because you had been made to feel as though you were lacking in knowledge about what was going on in your dc's school, and who haddecided attack was the best form of defence. PPA and PSHE are commonly-used acronyms which have been around for ages, and which I have heard used by lots of parents.

Personally it's amused me no end that recruitment and retention is now "talent management". If ever there was a misnomer, that is it.

Boomtown
But that is because R&R is already well known for its military connotations so the name change was a disambiguation

Hmmm this thread isn't quite what I thought it was on re reading. I thought it was more general idiotic phrases than only for teaching.

Still bloody hate talent management. Humph.

Where I worked it just meant consultants could charge 30% extra by flummoxing managers with 'science'

Erm my niece's school does have a junior leadership team. She's on it. She's 9.

Some children are "gifted" - they have demonstrated an ability in one particular subject far beyond that of an average child of their age. Some children are "talented" - they have demonstrated abilities in more than one subject that are above average but not necessarily at a level that could be considered "gifted". Some children are both "gifted" and "talented". There are usually objective criteria set down by the school to ascertain whether a child falls into either category.

I agree with the OP. It is bad practice to assume that everyone understands what acronyms mean. The first few letters home at the start of a child's schooling should use the proper terms and then abbreviate to the acronyms later on. Many, many parents have low levels of literacy and many others have English as a second language. To say that the onus is on them to work out what communications from school mean is a terrible attitude and leads to misunderstanding and alienation.
My DS also had a curriculum letter which stated that 'During PPA time Mrs A, Mrs B and Miss C take the children for cooking, music and art activities', so even if I decided to look up what PPA stands for I could still misunderstand the meaning.
God help you if you ever have to get your head around lesson plans annotated with SMSC, FSM etc.
God should not have to help - communications from a school should be clear and accessible, education is not a private club which only the privileged few are able to access and understand.
I feel quite strongly about this - can you tell

I agree, Elisheva. You should not have to Google in order to understand letters from school.

Also, Gifted and Talented: I thought gifted was for academic subjects like English or Maths, whereas talented was for arty subjects like dance or painting. I think the term has now been superseded by the equally meaningless jargon of "High learning potential".

My pet hate for a jargon word is "methodology", where the word "method" would not only have been perfectly adequate, but also more accurate.

Why would anyone but the teacher/staff be reading the lesson plan and why would you annotate a lesson plan FSM ?

The Department for Education still use the term Gifted & Talented I think the phrase High Learning Potential was coined by the NCGC and isn't commonly used by schools or teachers.

Thanks for the supportive posts.

With hindsight, I do think I drafted the OP too quickly and set the wrong tone. But I think this is an important issue so maybe I'll try to do a better OP later....

Re "gifted and talented". The way the two terms are always run together is in itself an example of poor and lazy usage. NOT by teachers who, as has been said, are run off their feet, but by those committees who adopt and promote such language (it came from the USA I believe) and the authorities who adopt it. Language is political, and when a term sounds official, it seeps into usage even though it blocks communication.

" 'During PPA time Mrs A, Mrs B and Miss C take the children for cooking, music and art activities', so even if I decided to look up what PPA stands for I could still misunderstand the meaning."
Yes Elisheva that's very similar to what we had. Mistaking internal shorthand (where the child's activity is described for the sake of brevity by what the teachers not teaching the child are doing instead) for acceptable usage. No parent should have to learn jargon. The very nature of professional jargon is that it's only ok within the profession. Something is wrong in education when teachers aren't playing (aren't allowed to play?)their proper role as guardians of good language usage.

"To say that the onus is on them to work out what communications from school mean is a terrible attitude and leads to misunderstanding and alienation."
Yes. Teachers have degrees and work very hard. So something is wrong here when smart people are failing to communicate. Though I didn't put it well (and that's a bigger lesson for me than any misspellings), I do think this is connected to teachers not feeling they have authority - that authority resides with those who deliver soft-skills courses and sit on committees. Otherwise why would teachers use jargon when their English lessons are spent (presumably) helping children to use language well?

Gifted and Talented is a category dictated by the Dept for Education ... which few teachers consider reliable especially the criteria for identifying such pupils.

Thanks. Interesting - how can a teacher avoid using the clunking language if it is handed down from on high like that....

I have never heard the term used at my kids' school. I do overhear the teachers use the term "high ability" which seems less yucky.

I don't actually know anyone who regularly uses the language in day to day conversation and I certainly wouldn't use it when chatting to parents.