School jargon

THE Government's Department for Education and Skills -- regularly shortened to the DfES -- has just published the results of a survey among 2,000 parents to find out which bits of education jargon are giving them trouble.

Sadly, the research showed that seven out of 10 did not even know what the DfES is.

However, 96 per cent knew what the national curriculum is and 89 per cent were familiar with key stages and what they mean to their offspring.

Government inspectors were better-known than their DfES bosses, the survey revealed. Eighty-eight per cent of respondents had heard of Ofsted, the acronym for the Office for Standards in Education, whose roving teams regularly report on every school's performance.

Meanwhile, a quarter of parents said they sometimes did not understand the written information they were receiving from their children's teachers, because it contained too much jargon.

The report said: "Many parents appear to be unaware of the terminology surrounding the fundamental elements of their children's education."

NQTs (as Newly-Qualified Teachers are known to everyone in the school staffroom), please note . . .