From the BBC 12 January 2007:
Young people will be required to stay in school, training or workplace training until the age of 18.
The Department for Education and Skills has confirmed plans to raise the school leaving age in England by 2013. This will not mean that pupils have to stay in the classroom or continue with academic lessons - but they will have to continue to receive training.
The Tories had three years to reverse this nonsense, but nope:
From the BBC 2 July 2012:
Pupils in England who fail to achieve at least a C grade at GCSE in English and maths will have to carry on taking the subjects to the age of 18, the government has announced.
This follows concerns too many teenagers leave education without adequate skills in literacy and numeracy needed by employers. It will see some pupils re-taking GCSEs and others taking less demanding tests, aimed at improving basic skills. This will apply from September 2013.
Tuesday 3 July 2012
Tories adopt yet another idiotic New Labour policy: shock
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9 comments:
I have to say I disagree with you. In a time when our schools are turfing out clearly unacceptable percentages of kids without the ability to read & write (let alone educated or skilled) why is this such a bad idea.
Watch the Jeremy Kyle show and tell me that education standards don't need improving.
And another two years of useless education will help how?
JM, you are missing the point.
Assuming a normal child and a reasonable willingness to learn etc, by what age do you think they can be taught to read and write and so maths to a standard sufficient for every day life? I'd guess somewhere about 13 or 14.
If they haven't learned by then, there's no point throwing good money after bad. Why not focus on the first few years, make them do spelling tests and comprehension and learn times tables and stuff? I'm sure most of my parents' generation left school at 14 or 15 and they can nearly all read and write.
If anything, this is just a ploy to reduce the number of NEETs and burnish government statistics.
MrC, exactly.
From the BBC 2 July 2012 (paraphrased):
We'll make you sit an exam and, if you don't pass it, we'll make you sit an easier one and so on until you pass"
You are right - it keeps them off the books. Perhaps these kids are smarter than we think - they see no point in attending sink schools in a sink area. They are unlikely to get a job and will never buy a house.
Remember that mass education only got going in the mid C19th when the top dogs were afeared the UK would fall behind Europe and Germany particularly. Think Mechanics Institutes etc etc - then there was a point to working class education. Move on to 2012 and there is little need for working class education - so it is not funded or managed to deliver - merely to give the illusion of action.
We came out of the Regency era into the Industrial era, now we are going back to something like the Regency era - a divided society of very rich and very poor with the middle class desperately clinging on to their 'position'.
R, that's a bit doom laden, but by and large, it appears that UK governments stopped caring about forty years ago, quite probably for the reasons you state.
Roger, it's more like ancient Rome with Patricians (politicians, landowners and other rentiers), Equestrians (bureaucrats and other jobs that don't add value to anything) and Plebeians (everyone else).
"If anything, this is just a ploy to reduce the number of NEETs and burnish government statistics."
Agreed. I don't know why they don't make tertiary education compulsory (but not paid for by the state, naturally) and so put the leaving age up to 21/22. Logically, the minimum leaving age ought to be put down to 11, i.e. only primary education is compulsory. That way those who don't want to learn and aren't going to learn can be chucked out of the system then and the ones that do want to learn can get on with doing so without so much disruption. Also, as far as parents are concerned, if you want the state to continue to offer you a free child-minding service after age 11, you had better make sure your child behaves in school.
My understanding is that the average reading age in the UK is about 11 - a stat that is the same as during the time of grammar schools and also the same as the reading age of The Sun. So no, two more years won't make a difference.
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