Every schoolboy knows that English imprecision makes it possible for “man eating shark” to have two meanings. Depending on the use of hyphens the image before us is either of a shark big enough to attack humans or a guy with a shark sarnie in his hands.
Similarly vague is the phrase “Very Good For Schools”. What exactly do people mean when they talk of a town being VGFS? Not necessarily that its schools are literally benefitting from the area. Quite the reverse in fact. VGFS usually means the townspeople are benefitting, hand over fist, particularly those who are selling up.
From an estate agent’s point of view inclusion in a classy catchment is worth its weight in zeros. In fact “Very Good For Schools” often translates as “You can make an absolute killing if you’re leaving but it’ll cost you a fortune to buy.”
The picture grows more complicated when you factor in the private sector.VGFS ought to mean that academic standards are high, given the eagerness of parents to move in. Lots of hugely-motivated pupils from hugely over-mortgaged families who daren’t go home with anything less than A+ unless they want a lecture on the cost of property in this area.
However, if these schools that are so very good include St Superior’s Girls Academy or Charg’em High for Boys then there is a real danger that the local comp loses out on these highly motivated kids and standards suffer.
There will be those who object to the idea that a school suffers when its middle-class pupils are creamed off but they are letting their ideology run away with them. The idea of comprehensive education, by definition, was that it provided education for all. If education for all is a good thing then families who duck it must make the comprehensive less comprehensive and, ergo, less good.
So good often does not mean good and comprehensive rarely means comprehensive. Can a language get less precise?
