You never correct how pupils speak. Ever.

“Please, Miss. Nigel said ‘bare’!” And how do you punish them? Put them in the stocks and pelt them with Lynne Truss tomes? Incarcerate them in a Correctional Facility?

Dear me, it’s rather bewildering. Wagwan? It displays a lamentable ignorance of how language works. What lies behind this initiative?

“The pupils must know better!”

Er... they do. We discuss these things in the soon to be banned “Speaking and Listening” GCSE unit – register, context, class, vernacular, demotic and phatic. In speech, we often dance with codes. It’s called wit. It’s fun to mash up language. Linguistics and ‘ting.

Even Shaka knows. He isn’t going to go to his careers officer, give him a fist bump, and say “yo wagwan blud” and ask the fellow if he “wan a fat blunt, breh”. Well, he might, because his linguistic suss and reckless humour would afford him mirth.