Spelling/grammar mistakes on schools' leaflets: a biggie or not?

[ItalianPoster]

I’d need some perspective here, please. We are visiting local primary schools and have noticed many schools have spelling or grammar mistakes on their websites and in their leaflets. The most common I have come across are writing “it’s” instead of “its” and “you’re” instead of “your”. To my foreign eyes, these mistakes are atrocious. However, I’d like some perspective from native speakers: are these mistakes as horrible as I find them? Are they considered not a big deal? Why/how / to what extent/ etc. This is not a rant - I am genuinely interested in the perspective of native speakers.

The reason I am asking, and the reason I am worried, is because I am concerned it may be a sign that teachers lack the most basic skills they are supposed to teach our children; primary school teachers don’t need to be Nobel prize physicists, but if a teacher said that 2+2 = 5 or struggled to multiply or divide by 10, then I’d be worried how he/she could possibly teach basic maths to children. My concern with its vs it’s is the same. Of course AFAIK a secretary, and not teachers, may have written those things, but, still…

I understand that, when typing quickly, you could skip one letter, type one letter twice, mix the order of two letters, etc. However, I do not understand how you can possibly even think of using an apostrophe when one is not needed; keyboard layouts may change, but on no keyboard is the apostrophe so close to the other letters that typing it might be a typing error – I think you’d have to deliberately look for it. This suggests the people who wrote that stuff are not familiar with the difference between a verb (it’s / you’re) and a possessive pronoun or adjective (its / your). I understand grammar is constantly evolving, I understand there may be different opinions on some of the more arcane rules, but this seems pretty black or white to me.

Thoughts? Thanks!

I am not a native speaker, but have had similar thoughts. I was reading reviews online for one particular school and some of the reviews were left by students in year 5 and 6 (as stated by them) and they were full of grammar and spelling mistakes. Well that didn't leave me with a lot of confidence that this school was good at teaching English and writing since at least 4-5 of their year 5-6 pupils cannot write properly.

In your case, yes the mistakes might be made by an admin/school secretary, however it shows you the care they take in how they present the school to parents and the community.

I am a native speaker and I agree completely with you. I can't stand seeing rogue apostrophes and in my view, the schools should proof-read things before they go out. But it also highlights a basic lack of spelling and grammar knowledge.

I doubt that a teacher doesn't know when to use "your" or "you're". They may well not have proof read properly, or may have delegated the task of making a website to another member of admin. staff. I would agree that it's not overly impressive but I would attribute it to a careless mistake rather than a glaring lack of grammatical ability.

Yep, I hate it too but you'll get an awful lot of people out here and in the real world who'll tell you it doesn't matter.

ime, school websites are often not a key priority for schools. Maybe they should worry more about the 'face' they present to the world, but for lots of (state) schools, it's not somewhere they will necessarily spend money or time, or indeed something that gets updated or reviewed on a regular basis, and errors can often be overlooked and left uncorrected. As an Eng Lit and Language grad (although I tend to the descriptivist rather than prescriptivist model!), basic errors annoy me too, but it would be a very minor issue if I was judging a school.

Most leaflets etc won't have been written by the teachers

If it's the odd mistake let it go (not great, but everyone makes mistakes).

If it's more, I'd be concerned (but would raise it with the school, not discount it automatically).

The school my DC used to go to went through a period where an A4 length newsletter would contain around 30 spelling and grammatical errors. That very much was indicative of other problems elsewhere (and thankfully did get resolved).

It really doesn't bother me so much. It's just a mistake, and most likely it's written not by a teacher. It's ideal if they correct the mistakes if they found it, but with limited budget, I assume they may just leave it as it is if they have printed out already.

English is my first language and I totally agree with you,
I went to a talk at dds senior school last year and a teacher ( PE) said pacifically for specifically.
But with newsletters and websites it’s often administrators who write them, but they should be checked before going live.

Oh, totally agree with websites. They should correct it, there's no excuse.

Thank you all for the feedback. I am also puzzled because I have often come across these errors from (supposedly) well-educated native speakers; in a previous job, I used to be very conflicted about this, because native speakers would tend to produce written material for external distribution with many such errors; on one hand I didn't want to appear pedantic (how dare a foreigner correct a native speaker...), on the other hand some of the customers/external people we dealt with, who'd read the material, would give me a hard time for it and constantly say that these errors reflected poorly on the company.

I remember one English ex-colleague (scientific degree from a Russell Group University plus PhD in a scientific subject from OxBridge) who used to confuse its and it's all the time!

In the main, I found that primary school teachers made very few really noticeable errors in their spelling or grammar. They certainly made some, but I'm picky.

John Humphrys is on record as saying that he either came across or heard about (can't remember which) a teacher who wrote on the bottom of an eight-year-old's essay: "You could of written this alot neater.". I certainly noticed that most of DS's primary teachers wrote run-on sentences ALL THE TIME, but I honestly don't know how we're going to stop that trend as it's now become absolutely rampant. (They also don't correct it now he's at secondary school, but possibly they choose to focus on what'll get him through his GCSE, and I imagine a run-on sentence or comma splice isn't going to have that big an impact, on the whole.)

I think it's probably not something I'd put above other criteria in choosing a primary school, and if your child is a reader (mine wasn't, unfortunately) then they should, hopefully, absorb correct sentence structure etc. from their reading material.

Dolores, I agree.

If there is any linguist around, I'd be curious to understand if there are specific reasons why some errors (like these) seem to be made more frequently by native speakers than by foreigners. Don't get me wrong, Italians are on average awful with languages, and the average Italian will make lots and lots of mistakes when writing in English - but, in my experience, typically not these ones! Nor have I ever seen a German, French or Scandinavian person make these mistakes - but I am not an English teacher and my experience is not necessarily representative.

I wouldn’t think it’s a reflection on the teaching staff but it would reflect on admin and the head. I’d point it out.

I think foreigners are more critical about mistakes, because we are drilled on it? I am a foreigner and I do find some spelling/grammar mistakes annoying, but I don't say anything, because I do make mistakes myself. Also when I am writing in my own language, I am more relaxed, so I would also make silly mistakes, especially when typing. It's not a end of the world, and certainly doesn't represent school's teaching.

ItalianPoster

There was a period of time (I'm mid 30's and I was part of this wave) in education where grammar wasn't really taught at all. Obviously if you continue in education long enough you pick up the basics (I would hope everyone knows when to use your/you're) but it was just not something that was stressed at school so plenty of people are not in the habit of being very careful with grammar. I do agree though in a professional document it looks unimpressive to have basic errors of that kind.

I doubt that a teacher doesn't know when to use "your" or "you're". They may well not have proof read properly

I wish this were true! I regularly receive emails containing grammatical errors from my DCs' secondary school teachers. It happens too frequently to be put down to the occasional typo. Equally, when I look in my DCs' English workbooks, I see obvious grammatical errors made by my DC which are not corrected in the teacher's marking.

If teachers (including English teachers!) can't be relied upon to use correct grammar and to mark up grammatical and spelling errors in pupils' work, it is no surprise to me that a large proportion of young people don't understand how to use apostrophes, semi-colons and similar.

In many schools the website and social media is not run by a teacher. Sometimes they are, often not. It's more likely to be admin staff, and the website generated externally.

Our website is created externally, and key information was added by that same person/company. We do however have people checking the information, which we try to do before it goes live.

As a TA I do update some aspects of the school website and do almost all SM updates. I use information generated from all staff including admin. I do double check grammar and spellings but I'm sure the odd one, on SM, May get through especially if I'm updating them later in the evening when tired, or whilst trying to also do two or three other jobs at the same time. I can spell and I do have reasonable grammar, honestly! I do try to ensure they don't have errors obviously and correct them as soon as any might be spotted, but equally I'm human.

Most errors I've seen online especially on SM have been typo and autocorrect errors tbh. Easily done.

I don't think it's indicative that a teacher doesn't know the correct grammar, but more that no one took the time or care to check it properly. Thinking of the schools I've worked at, the ones that would have let it go, were not good schools.

"There was a period of time (I'm mid 30's and I was part of this wave) in education where grammar wasn't really taught at all. "

Now this sounds scary to me! What is the national curriculum now? Do all/most/few schools teach grammar? Is there any official documentation on what the national curriculum is meant to cover? I assume all State schools must follow it, right? I had a look at the websites of the primary schools in the area and teaching grammar is not explicitly mentioned.

Any info you may have on the curriculum would be hugely helpful: as you may imagine, as foreigners, this is all new to us.

When I was a kid, Italian schools were too theoretical and would dedicate too much time and energy to the teaching of abstract and often anachronistic rules - e.g. we were forced to learn verbal tenses that no one had used for decades, and that would cause people to laugh at us if we were to speak like that in real life.

It seems to me the British and Italian approaches were the two extremes - both equally wrong.

1Wanda1

I still doubt that the teachers literally don't understand the difference between your/you're much more likely they're just careless when writing emails. I sometimes make those kinds of silly errors I 100% understand that it's wrong (and cringe if I notice too late) but it's definitely carelessness not ignorance (at least on my part).

ItalianPoster

My understanding is that the current trend in the UK is shifting a bit too far in the opposite direction, at least in primary. Too much theory, where as in the past we had too little but I'm not an expert.

When DD1 was 5 years old, she used to correct her teacher’s spelling. I used to get my red pen out and send school reports and letters back with corrections added.

I’m sure they thought I was a pedant and DD1 a pain, but if they can’t get the basics right in Primary 1, they are damaging the education and life chances of any children who don’t have literate parents to fill in the gaps for them.
It’s much harder to put it right later, if the child has been taught incorrect grammar and spelling up to the age of eleven. These things stick.

"There was a period of time (I'm mid 30's and I was part of this wave) in education where grammar wasn't really taught at all. "

Now this sounds scary to me! What is the national curriculum now? Do all/most/few schools teach grammar?

I was taught grammar - started school in the late 70s. DH started the same time and he didn't do grammar at school.

Now - grammar is on the curriculum, from Key Stage 1 onwards. There is a SPAG test as part of SATs. The actual test is optional at Key Stage 1; compulsory at KS2.