The BHA reports a bit of good news:
Ofsted has today withdrawn and committed to update a briefing for inspectors on ‘faith’ schools that endorsed gender segregation in lessons, as well as restrictions on the teaching of art and music. The British Humanist Association (BHA) criticised the guidance on Thursday after the Times brought it to light, pointing out that it contradicted negative findings from Ofsted and the Education Funding Agency into the practices of schools in Birmingham and of the Al-Madinah School in Derby last year, as well as the stated policy of the Department for Education. The BHA wrote to Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw about the briefing and has welcomed the decision.
It quotes from their statement, which is written in the most impenetrable officialese…I mean, check it out:
In line with the advice provided to the Secretary of State for Education, HM Chief Inspector is considering any lessons for Ofsted following its recent inspections of 21 schools in Birmingham.
You can read this statement on the Parliament website.
As part of this undertaking, he has given instructions for a number of documents under the headings of Subsidiary guidance to support the inspection of maintained schools and academies and Briefings and information for use during inspections of maintained schools and academies to be temporarily taken down while their content is reviewed.
This guidance, updated where necessary, will be re-published shortly.
That third paragraph is a real doozy. Anyway, if the BHA tells me that’s what it means, I’ll take their word for it.
BHA Head of Public Affairs Pavan Dhaliwal commented, ‘We welcome the news that Ofsted is revising its briefing for inspectors on “faith” schools. It is vital that every young person receives a broad and balanced education free from discrimination on the basis of religion or belief, gender, sexual orientation or any other protected characteristic – regardless of the type of school they are educated in. That Ofsted previously hosted a briefing that was discriminatory on some of these grounds was concerning and we are pleased that it has taken prompt action to rectify this issue.’
Good. Now don’t do it again, Ofsted. Pull your socks up.
Speaking as a trained and experienced bureaucrat I can honestly say that I’m not quite sure what that third paragraph is supposed to mean.
The third paragraph is missing punctuation. The hint is in the wonky capitalization and the repeat of the phrase “the inspection of maintained schools and academies”. With some quotation marks it’s not inpenetrable at all:
So, a number of documents under those two headings have been removed pending revision.
Lawyers and bureaucrats in Britain don’t appear to like punctuation at all. I don’t know why, possibly it’s just to keep the rest of us confused.
Quite a lot, though not all, of the recent problems with both faith schools, and secular schools which have been subject to attempts at Islamist takeover, stem from the current government’s drive to atomise the state education system, removing schools from oversight by elected local councils, no doubt in preparation for full-scale privatisation. Not that the previous government was much better, as Blair was a fanatical proponent of faith schools.
Speaking as an interpreter, I am convinced that many lawyers and bureaucrats in the English-speaking world don’t understand punctuation and syntax very well. However, the biggest culprits are the politicians who pass laws they don’t understand at all.
The third paragraph means they’ve taken all their controversial stuff down while they think about it for a bit.
As Bob Dowling makes clear. I don’t think that this is real Officialese. I think that “some efforts were made”. Real Officialese is quite different (inasmuch as its procedure regarding and respecting the various aforementioned and subsidiary references to the relevant insert-thing-here as detailed in section 5101 of the polysyllabically-and-multiverbally entitled document subsection 29 clause d, the decision has been reached in view of thingummy that with all due wotsit it nevertheless is, so with the most exceeding courtesy tough). Real Officialese is a remnant of ancient kingly sovereignty and is intended to obsure, confound and intimidate. The verbiage which we are negotiating here is merely careless.
The truth is that English is not taught in this country. I know that there is something called “English” on the syllabus, but it isn’t English. There is a social rule that anyone who cares about clarity (and therefore vocabulary, grammar and punctuation) is not to be considered a sensible person. This is an essential part of British culture. The underlying trope goes: “I know what I mean, so stop fussing”. ’Sculchurinni’?**
Having said that, I recall that two days ago a nine-year-old pupil of mine proved that she knew about adverbs (they end in -ly), though this conversation arose because she, like all my child pupils, says “good” when I ask them how they are (I tell them I don’t believe it). But there is clearly hope. Perhaps things are changing, once again.
* This is a nasty choice of words — I mean, to British people (imprisoned after trial). The writer can justify the words and pretend to ignore the authoritarian associations. As a mere “accident” it seems suspicious, as though the writer would dearly wish to write Officialese, if only they had been educated at Eton when there really was an Empire.
** For foreigners and other disadvantaged persons: “It’s culture, isn’t it?”