Honest (re-)branding

A non-public school* near me has recently changed its message and this is a good thing. Why? Because previously, they had not been telling the truth.

The school's previous identity was as a "specialist" school and they claimed to be experts in this area and to have faculty who were highly-qualified and experienced in its teaching.

However, none of these claims were accurate and while the community may not have been completely aware of the deception, it was fairly widely known amongst other educators and school administrators. In fact, when I was hiring, I interviewed several applicants from that school (the high churn rate amongst their faculty should have indicated something) and hired none due to their noticeable lack of knowledge and skills in that very specialist area.

Anyhoo, last year they school changed its self-description to having "a focus". Apart from being inherently more honest than hitherto, the neat trick here is of course the amorphousness of the term "focus". They do indeed devote more hours to their area of focus than other schools. and that may be enough.

Regular readers will know how much I value and stress the importance of Mission, and from there of clearly defining the Mission globally and its language specifically. Clearly this happened here, and (presumably) the school's Board realized that it is not, and possibly cannot be, a specialist. Good for them. No matter the motivation for this change, I can only applaud their decision.

*What the term "non-public"? Well, I have a problem with using the term private to cover such a range of public alternatives. We have corporate schools, religious schools, parochial schools, proprietary schools, independent schools ... the term "private" does not allow for such a panoply of provision. I touch on this confusion 

here ; https://teaching-abc.blogspot.com/2012/08/public-or-not.html
here : https://teaching-abc.blogspot.com/2014/06/are-all-private-schools-same.html
and here : https://teaching-abc.blogspot.com/2014/06/local-schools.html

inter alia.

**Please leave comments and questions below.**