What if they could get a job straight away at 16 - should they be able to do that or forced to stay in education?

What's the next step... compulsory education until 25 ... this is crazy.. It was bad to make people study until 16.... when 14 was more than correct.. (though I would be fine with anything between 12 and 15).

It is crazy and scared... the level of stupidty and lackof basic knwoledge is scary.... is that they really do not know a jot about anthropology.. is that they are that stupid..or tht make it on purpose.. I bet they want more criminals (becasue this is what they are oging to get much more criminals).. they want to make it more difficult for everybody to get a decent education.. I guess this is what it's all about... create crazy nuts people from 14 to 18 (actually they would dream to make it until 21 like in fascist times... Am I the only one noticing the pattern that fascist regime always put the number above 20.. and yes some souther US states count as semi-fascist in their basic ideology).

Well... sorry for the rant... but... i will send all those sicking asshXXXX to a freaking supernova... hoping that someday someone could recycle their material for something useful....inthis present form they are dangerous.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

The move aims to tackle the problem of young people leaving education without qualifications or workplace skills.

People don't become unemployable at 16 - they start becoming unemployable much earlier than that. One in five 11-year-olds is heading for irrelevance in the skills-based economy when he or she leaves primary school after seven long years and is still unable to read or write properly. One in six has got there after another four years, when they exit the education system altogether, unable to read, write or add up. Will two more compulsory years in the classroom make the difference here? Perhaps, for some children. Perhaps not.

Johnson last year confessed that the problems with many schoolchildren started early.
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The problem is not that they don't spend long enough at school, but that the time they spend there is wasted.
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Yet the lack of candidates' formal education, if you listen to employers, is only part of the problem. What many of these young people lack are social skills. One cannot, surely, need too many qualifications in order to sit at a till in Tesco, scanning groceries all day. But one does need to have very basic skills such as an ability to get out of bed in the morning, dress presentably, get on with one's peers, display a little charm to the customer, and generally smile and make the best of things in order to beat off boredom and make the work bearable. In order to progress in the organisation, of course, one needs those skills in spades.
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The trouble is that the skills needed to thrive at work or in college aren't so very different from the most basic of those that are needed to get on at school, which is why all those fusty ideas about uniform, discipline, good manners and not running in the corridor are so important. It's why, also, headteachers must have the mechanisms available through which they can properly apply those ideas, including useful alternatives for children who are unable for whatever reason to play the 21st century skills game.

The problem of education in the UK is not the resources that are thrown at those who will achieve good grades. It is the indifference of the system to those who begin to fall behind. And that process starts very very early. There are real issues of the number of children arriving at secondary school (age 11) with barely- or non-existent abilities to read, write or do basic arithmetic. We know how to remedy this, but in our educational model we choose not to.

And these are the kids who become Neets, (Not in Education, Employment or Training) at 16, the ones who staying on till 18 is attempting to address. Except, of course, they've been playing hookey, bored by a process that doesn't care about them now and hasn't addressed their needs since they were 6 years old. Can't wiat to leave, aredisruptive when they're there and criminally bored (ie inclined) when they're not. They've nothing else to do.

There was a programme on recently about a school in East London where a terrifying percentage of the children age 7 couldn't read and many at age 10 coulnd't either. One 11 year old was the youngest of 4, nobody in the family could read. Not mother, father nor any of this brothers !!!!!!

So the prog invoked the best known educational practices and a small extra resource and they turned the attainment of every child around. If you can read, you can be educated. It's that simple. Every hcild in that experiment now has a chance.

We can do it if we want. We just don't because we have an education system geared to creating a few winners and a lot of losers. To change that requires a bit more than tinkering and nobody will do it.

* The 3 Rs. Reading, writing, arithmetic. Well, one out of 3 ain't bad.

keep to the Fen Causeway

TUC welcomes apprentices bill
Commenting on the Draft Apprenticeships Reform Bill in today's Queen's Speech, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

"The TUC welcomes measures to improve the number of apprenticeships on offer to young people starting out in the world of work and to older workers looking for a change of direction. More must be done to encourage employers to take on more young black and Asian people, and greater efforts are needed to support women into apprenticeships in areas like engineering and construction that are still dominated by the boys.

"If apprenticeships are to offer meaningful career opportunities, they must be of good quality, where apprentices are treated well and earn a decent wage. Legislative powers to regulate and promote apprenticeships give the opportunity to do just that, and it is important we get it right. The Government should ask the Low Pay Commission to review the current minimum wage exemptions that apply to apprentices."

What about older workers??

(Summary of all the draft Bills)

Ad astra per aspera

And assuming they could enter the job market in a meaningful way, they should not drop out of school.  In my opinion.  Heck, I think college should be compulsory (and as accessible as public education.)  

I really have no knowledge of how other countries work.  But in the US it's expected you'll finish 12 grades, which one usually does around 18 yrs of age.  Otherwise, you don't get a HS degree.  And I think there is some stigma (and serious employment hurdles) attached to that.  

I can see the benefits of starting work early, but none in dropping out of school.  Still, one will always have the opportunity to work (or most of us will, out of sheer necessity).

I don't think it all pivots on "adulthood" (maturity) so much as on "how much knowledge do we want citizens to have?"  

What am I talking about?  Our education system sucks so badly.  Might as well ask how long the state should pay for kids to be babysat and tested.  Still, I thought required schooling until 18 was a social improvement...  Or is the world in such bad shape we should throw up our hands and overturn a century of child labor laws?  I say don't stop at 18; move it up to 21.

"This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."

For education to really work, you need at least some minimal degree of student motivation or interest.  While a good teacher can sometimes create such interest, even the best teacher can't do so for everyone.  Further, such teachers are as often as not the exception rather than the norm.

Forcing unmotivated and uninterested students to stay in the classroom not only fails to educate them, but it also alienates them from "the system" even more than they already may have been, as any direct imposition of state coercion is bound to do.

In Japan, education is compulsory through the completion of middle school, so until the students are 15 going on 16.  For the most part, Japanese schools are un-specialized until this point, and attendence is based primarily on proximity to one's place of residence.  From there on, students need to pass exams to enter a school, and the schools are specialized.  Some are top-level college-prep schools, some are vocational schools, some are general purpose vaguely academic schools, and some are low-level "I just want a HS diploma" schools.

I know many of my students who have opted not to go into High School, or who dropped out.  I see them working in a variety of jobs around town.  Some of these are the proverbial low-wage service jobs, which are often worked part-time.  Some of those students are also going to a job-prep school in their spare time, and some aren't.  However, I also know of several students who have entered the proper workforce in a variety of blue-collar jobs, construction workers and mechanics and whatnot.  I also know of many high school graduates who have gone this route.  The fact that Japan still has a solid productive sector that primarily hires Japanese people makes a HUGE difference in the viability of the non-college route.

Many of these people were the students who were either horribly disruptive in class, or who just put their heads down and refused to pay attention.  They didn't want to be there, and they were not going to participate in anything, and they made that quite clear.  Further compulsory education would have been wasted on them - it would be warehousing, and nothing more.

Then again, I also know some students who've gone on to be gangsters, or to work in the hostess sector.  Some of them had parents in similar lines of work, so there may have been nothing for it, but I do wonder.