During the Second World War, military leaders faced a problem: how to communicate complex strategies quickly, clearly, and without room for misinterpretation.
The solution?
A controlled, coded language. Jargon wasn’t designed to confuse. It was designed to make communication faster, clearer and more precise when lives depended on it.
So how did we get from that kind of clarity to this?
“Ensure fidelity of implementation to maximise learner agency and drive measurable impact across pedagogical domains.”
Seriously?
In education today, jargon has become the opposite of what it was invented for:
It no longer clarifies; it obscures.
It no longer unites; it excludes.
Once a tool for shared understanding, it’s now a smokescreen.
It creates a sense of insider knowledge, but leaves too many people - parents, students, even teachers - on the outside.
Jargon today is unclear on purpose.
It says, “If you don’t get it, maybe you’re not supposed to.” It creates distance.
And in schools, distance costs us trust, engagement, and alignment.
What if school boards, leadership teams, and staff rooms aimed not to sound clever but to sound clear? What if we scrapped the edu-speak and aimed to win a Plain English Crystal Mark instead?
That’s the challenge we’re taking on this month with schools in Santo Domingo, Helsinki, Maastricht, Menlo Park, Cartagena, Dubai, London, Chengshu, and Singapore. In every one of these communities, we’re hearing hundreds of passionate, creative, compelling ideas.
Our work is to help shape them into a strategy that people want to read, one that gives everyone a clear picture of the next few years, not just the few with the decoder ring.
So what about you? Before your next strategy meeting or school newsletter, run this test:
Could a 10-year-old understand it? Could a parent explain it at the dinner table?
If not, it might be time to cut the tosh.