Observations on wordplay

Once, most children went to places called schools. Only the very rich went to colleges, with names like Eton College, and they paid through the nose. During the 1970s, however, the word "school" started to mean "terrifying concrete jungle filled with drug-crazed teenagers", so when Margaret Thatcher's education secretary Kenneth Baker inven-ted a new sort of school, to be handed over to private companies, he called it a college - the city technology college.

Now the trouble with verbal gentrification is that it needs constantly to reinvent itself. Within a few years, "college" came to mean "terrifying concrete jungle filled with drug-crazed teenagers". So when new Labour decided to relaunch city technology colleges, it needed a new name. Thus were born city academies.

In a few years, naturally, "academy" will mean "terrifying concrete jungle filled with drug-crazed teenagers", but I suspect new Labour is ahead of the game. In Millbank there is, I am sure, a sealed envelope marked "to be opened by the Education Secretary after city academies have failed". And inside it, Ruth Kelly (if she still has the honour of representing Lord Adonis in the House of Commons) will find one word: "conservatoire".

Verbal gentrification goes back to the birth of universal state education. The 1945 government decided there should be two sorts of secondary school. There were to be grammar schools for brainy kids, who would grow up to be middle managers and professionals - not quite as grand as those who went to fee-charging schools and were destined to run the country, but fit to be spoken to. The others, for the majority, were for thick kids, destined to be at the bottom of the heap.

But "schools for thick kids, destined to be at the bottom of the heap" was not the way to sell them. Ministers had the brilliant idea of calling them "secondary moderns". Then as now, the word "modern" was thought of as making anything attractive. Horrifyingly fast, the words "secondary modern" came to mean "school for thick kids, destined to be at the bottom of the heap". Frantic efforts were made to save the words. Teachers and education administrators were instructed to say that you did not "pass" or "fail" the 11-plus exam, which decided whether you went to a grammar or a secondary modern; you were just selected for "a different type of school". Parents and children knew they were being lied to.

So Harold Wilson's education secretary Anthony Crosland started abolishing the 11-plus and secondary moderns. Because the Wilson government disliked top-down solutions (how absurdly fastidious that seems now), the job was not complete when Labour lost office in 1979 and secondary moderns had a new lease of life.

But the name had to be gentrified. There is no longer a single school in Britain calling itself a secondary modern. In those parts of the country that still operate the 11-plus, such as Kent, secondary moderns are generally called "high schools". It must have struck someone in government as pleasing to call the lowest of the low "high schools" - like Orwell's Ministry of Truth which told lies, and his Ministry of Love which made war. And now the inevitable is happening. "High schools" is generally understood to mean "schools for thick kids, destined to be at the bot-tom of the heap". Soon a new name will be needed, and I have a small bet on "new technological conservatoires".

Meanwhile, polytechnics were straining at the plebeian overtones of their names, which they thought made them sound like concrete jungles for the lower orders. So the Thatcher government allowed them to call themselves universities and they set about giving themselves sonorous new names. Central London Poly renamed itself the University of Westminster (and gave itself a new portcullis logo to show it was anything up to, oooh, 50 years old). Then there was the University of Central England in Birmingham, the University of the West of England in Bristol and the University of Central Europe on Stoke Newington roundabout. (All right, I made the last one up.)

When they found that people distinguished them from the ivy-covered kind by calling them "former polys", even though their directors were now ermine-clad vice-chancellors, they rebranded themselves as "modern universities".

Next down the food chain are the humble further education colleges, now often so discontented with their lot that they are seeking to amalgamate with the nearest "modern" university so as to become a university campus. But naturally, a new, cutting-edge, high-tech, modern one. Not a secondary sort of modern one, you understand. That would never do.

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