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Date Posted: 00:53:05 06/21/02 Fri
Author: Tweety
Subject: This story is especially for "Teach!"

This problem doesn't just exist in this country!

Manchester (UK) Evening News

Education advert's grammar blunder

A NATIONAL advertising campaign designed to attract a team of leading education advisers to Manchester to improve the city's schools was riddled with mistakes, it emerged today.

The ad - which is headed "Ensuring Excellence in Education" - has come under fire from education and language experts who claim it is likely to put off good candidates.

It was published to recruit managers, on salaries of up to almost £60,000 per year, for the Manchester School Improvement Partnership, which it boasts was set up to "raise standards and ensure that Manchester is at the forefront of innovation in Education."

But the advert is full of gaffes, varying from the unnecessary use of capital letters to poor punctuation and words used out of context.

One paragraph includes the phrase: "If you think you have what it takes to make a significant and lasting impression to Education attainment in one of the Country's most dynamic and forwarding looking authorities…"

City schools bosses say they spotted the mistakes but there was not time for a corrected version to appear in print.

21 errors

Manchester Metropolitan University language lecturer Mike Crompton said the text - which was recently placed in a prestigious educational publication - contains no fewer than 21 grammatical errors.

He fears that the advert will give a poor impression of local educational standards.

Mr Crompton said: "I suggest that if the city council want to ‘ensure excellence’ then they should have put their advertisement through an expert to be checked.

“Excellence is not just about good ideas but also making sure they are clear and well-presented."

John Lister from the Plain English Campaign, which is based in New Mills, said: "This reminds me of those adverts for proof-reader posts which are deliberately full of grammatical errors.

“It has got a bit of everything, from poor punctuation to mysterious capital letters, which crop up in the middle of sentences.

‘Irony’

"It is a wonderful irony that it is advertising for jobs in education.”

A Manchester city council spokesman said: "We were fully aware of the mistakes in this advert and had corrected them when it was in draft form.

“However, the final deadline for this national publication was very tight. Unfortunately we missed it and the advert was published without our revisions.

"This is embarrassing for us and we offer our apologies - we are also happy to report that we've had an unprecedented number of inquiries and applications for these crucial and innovative posts."

But Coun Simon Wheale, education spokesman for Manchester's Liberal Democrat group, said: "Manchester desperately needs to overhaul and improve standards in education, which have not been rising as fast as other places in the country.

"I'm absolutely sure we aren't going to get the best candidates to manage the School Improvement Partnership if we are putting out adverts which are grammatically wrong.

"It is crazy that no one has properly proof-read this. It is vital we get these things right."

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/content.cfm?story=340313&archive=archive

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