At some point in 2020, I was in a staff meeting and becoming frustrated with the language of education. In particular the way that school reports (at least in my experience as both teacher and parent) seem designed to ensure no one is upset by a teacher suggesting sometimes child can't do something. "Fred is developing the ability to ***" sounds good. But it reality it means "Fred should be able to *** but can't". To prevent myself from dominating the meeting with my complaints, I wrote the following policy (educators, feel free to present it to your institution as a policy suggestion).
When producing school documents, it is important to ensure that these written instruments always facilitates educational dialogue and best practice outcomes. At The College we do this through the provision of multi-platform written communication, which deploys the most appropriate style guides alongside expedient editing processes and current formatting procedures (both manual and automated) to maximise intelligibility across language, cultural and intergenerational divides; producing an end product which eschews gatekeeper-centric obfuscation of the intended message created through professional and technical jargon or the use of potentially inconsistent vernacular expressions, in favour of phrasing which is capable of generating complete clarity and wide teaching decipherment through brevity and the intentional application of the most applicable form of accessible verbiage. We do this to ensure that we, as gatekeepers to educational outcomes, drive scholastic accomplishment through guaranteeing transparency and coherence of all grammar and vocabulary; and are therefore able to amplify the core message of The College to all stakeholders: internal, external, and potential.
