English standards fall
If you are worried about the state of plain English, or standards of English on the whole – particularly in the English-speaking country where the language originated – you had better not listen to what England’s Schools Minister said this Tuesday on the radio.
On the other hand, if you’re the sort of editor who doesn’t expect to retire for another 20 to 30 years, you may take heart from the fact that one in five of the next generation can’t write extended sentences, use punctuation, read between the lines of a story or understand the moral or message behind it.
It’s quite a delightful interview if you missed it. Radio 4 presenter, Eddie Mair gives the minister, Diana Johnson MP, a polite grilling. And I always think there’s nothing nicer than feeling that a politician is squirming, politely fuming, or just coming unstuck.
Ms Johnson defends herself by saying:
“…that overall with Maths and Science, we’ve been holding steady…”
When I first heard the interview, I envisaged Ms Johnson on some sort of pirate ship with school children clutching their Maths and Science results like handrails. A large wave came and washed them all about the deck. I was distracted by this image until she said:
“This is the first statistical release and we need to wait until the autumn to get the final figures but obviously it’s disappointing to see that slight dip and we need to redouble our efforts around English.”
It was then that I realised I didn’t understand the words – or at least I recognised them but couldn’t work out how on earth they were supposed to work together. Statistical release? It sounds like some sort of jail break of numbers. How does a release become statistical, unless what the statistics are measuring is something to do with releasing?
And please release me from the fate of constantly having to listen to people who use the preposition ‘around’ when they just can’t be bothered to remember which preposition to use.
Ironically, ‘around’ is the perfect preposition to put after the word ‘scrambling’ to describe the way Ms Johnson tried to explain why 20 per cent of children in English schools aren’t meeting the required standards. She lurched from one excuse to the next: special needs, children who don’t have English as a first language, boys being a bit on the slow side, and then – as Mair put on the pressure – she said that when the government have all the figures in a few months time…
“we’ll be drilling down into what’s happened in particular schools, in particular local authorities and seeing if we can identify what the problem is.”
Drilling down? Might part of the problem be that the Schools Minister for England’s own understanding of English is little better than that of these failing children? Look at her voting record – very keen on war, not so keen on transparency in Parliament. You have to ask yourself if there’s a moral in this story – a meaning between the lines – and if there is, whether Diana Johnson MP is likely to spot it.
(You can hear what the Schools Minister had to say on the BBC i-player until next Tuesday evening, 11 August. The item starts nine minutes and 18 seconds into the hour-long programme; the interview after ten minutes and 40 seconds.)
