Schools using 'Orwellian language' are turning teenagers into 'customers' rather than students, a landmark report says today.
Phrases such as 'performance indicators' and 'curriculum delivery' are interfering with the enthusiasm teachers have for doing their jobs, the six-year investigation finds.
The Oxford-based Nuffield Review, the most comprehensive
study of secondary education in 50 years, said that 'the words
we use shape our thinking'.
And the report said that 'the Orwellian language (seeping
through government documents) of "performance management
and control" has come to dominate educational deliberation
and planning'.
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Teachers are inundated with the language of measurable 'inputs'
and 'outputs', 'performance indicators' and 'audits', 'targets'
and 'curriculum delivery', 'customers' and 'deliverers', 'efficiency
gains' and 'bottom lines', it said.
In a damning indictment, the report said that a culture of
hitting targets, where 'cuts in resources are euphemistically
called "efficiency gains"', has led to 'the consumer
or client' replacing 'the learner'.
