Hiding behind lengthy titles and even longer PowerPoint presentations while cooking up strategic action plans and implementing universal solution provision, just what is the point of that army of jargon-spouters invading your school life?

Endangered species

Being a headteacher is undoubtedly a very challenging and wide-reaching role. It does, however, have the benefit of being pretty well defined. When I tell people what I do, they instantly have a good, if basic, understanding of what my daily life is like. They may miss out the little things that make the role particularly challenging and rewarding, but they have the general idea: a headteacher runs a school.

This clarity is in direct contrast to an increasingly large number of people I encounter at meetings, via email and in telephone conversations whose purpose I cannot identify even when they have explained it to me and, in some cases, even done presentations on their function.

They are people whose sole responsibility seems to be to write action plans that have a complete lack of actions but simply state that ‘a task and finish group will be created to carry out this piece of work’. Until I met these people I didn’t know that a ‘task and finish group’ existed. I still don’t know what they do. I assume they carry out a task and once it has been carried out it is finished. I have something similar at my school. They are just called groups; they do the tasks until they are finished and move on . . . that’s how jobs work.

The people in these roles have, like all successful organisms, not only managed to multiply but also to adapt their behaviour in order to survive. They camouflage their role behind ever-longer job titles and vague remits such as ‘director of universal and early support services’.

Universal must mean that they do everything? And they do it early so that must be better than doing it late. District strategic lead, CAF champion, senior early intervention development officer – the list grows year on year.

Cunning strategies

They have also evolved cunning defence strategies, shields behind which they can shelter when under attack. The Data Protection Act 1998 is a particular favourite of some:

NEETCSPAMSP (NEET coordinating strategic prevention and monitoring solution provider): “We need to reduce NEETs in the area, especially ones we can’t contact.”

SP (Sensible person): “OK, tell me the names of the ones from my school and we will contact them through their friends and relatives.”

NEETCSPAMSP “We can’t divulge the names.” SP “But we could help contact them, check how they are, help them into education or training.”

NEETCSPAMSP “Data protection; can’t tell you who they are.” SP “That’s ridiculous; they only left us last year. We probably have their brother or sister with us. They may come in for their coursework. Surely you can tell us who needs help?”

NEETCSPAMSP “We will set up a task and finish group to look into it.”

Sometimes, but not often, one of these shy and secretive creatures will reveal their true lack of any real clue about anything by making an actual suggestion. These are, without exception, very poorly thought-through but have the appearance of being reasonable ideas. My favourite is, when asked what to do with unallocated funds earmarked for projects to support young people, that we “hold a celebration event so that all the good practice can be shared”.

SP “Would this benefit the children the funding was aimed at?”

NEETCSPAMSP “No, they aren’t invited; we can network about how well everything went and how the task was finished early, too.”

SP “Won’t this free and supportive exchange of ideas have implications for data protection?”

NEETCSPAMSP “Good point; we’ll use the under-spend to set up a group to look into that.”

I have decided that, as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) are seemingly uninterested in protecting and preserving these misunderstood creatures, I will take up the challenge myself. They need to be preserved so that future generations can marvel at the ‘lesser-spotted multi-agency support hub coordinator (inclusion and sustainable development)’.

In order to take on this challenge I could have written an action plan or set up a you-knowwhat group, but, instead, I decided the most practical and rewarding way to preserve these creatures was to enrol on a taxidermy course.

The writer is a headteacher in the North West.

Last Word always welcomes contributions from members. If you’d like to share your humorous observations of school life, email Permjit Mann at leader@ascl.org.uk ASCL offers a modest honorarium.

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