Poundland has taken exception to being compared to a school Grade 4 (new C) in the new GCSE exam-mark system by a weekly eduation publication.
The discount giant’s PR and charity manager Andrea Ross has written a strongly worded statement to Tes – written by Stephen Petty, head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame – in which she strongly denounced his comparison.
‘To suggest conflating lesser grades with Poundland simply perpetuates Britain’s systematic class system,’ she said.
Poundland is one of the UK’s leading high street discount stores
The company prides itself on providing good value for money
‘I hope my assumption that part of the ethos at your school is to use language respectfully and in a way that doesn’t promote stereotypical thinking.
‘Let me tell you that I know my 19,000 colleagues at Poundland will find your use of our company name as a pejorative adjective belittling to them and how hard they work’.
In her response she pointed out that Poundland attracts a high volume of ‘AB’ shoppers – not dissimilar from that of the U.K. as a whole.
‘After you have got over your surprise that someone at Poundland reads the TES or can translate your school motto, perhaps we can respectfully ask that you avoid using our name as a judgmental adjective in future, if only so people are less likely to jump to conclusions about you.’
In his article Petty argued that Grade 5 – while technically a C grade – is deemed a ‘Waitrose C’, and held in much higher esteem than a Grade 4.
‘They may be numerical next-door neighbours,’ he wrote, ‘but in terms of social status, the numbers four and five have been drifting apart from each other for many years.’
He said that when the Department of Education first let slip that the new GCSE Grade 5 would be a ‘good’ pass, ‘we could immediately sense the ground crumbling beneath the feet of vulnerable little Grade 4’.
‘Even though they then altered the word ‘good’ to ‘strong’ and reassured everyone that 4, too, could be called a pass – a ‘standard’ pass – the underlying message was clear to all: Grade 4 was going to be – in their middle-class world – a flaky Poundland Grade C, while 5 would be the equivalent of a Waitrose C.
‘Ofsted confirmed this Waitrosification when it declared that Grade 5 would now be its new line in the sand when assessing school ‘pass’ rates, despite 4 being the fairer comparison with previous results.’
Petty was writing in Tes – formerly known as the Times Educational Supplement – now a weekly publication aimed primarily at school teachers in Britain.