04 November 2007

School Leaving Age

Can anybody tell me how compelling disillusioned and disaffected 16-year-olds to stay on at school until they are 18 is going to achieve anything besides delaying the day when they join the 1.2 million other 16-24-year-olds who are not productively involved in society?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have just finished reading a book based prior to 1925 and the incentive parents gave to their children who wished to leave school before the school leaving age of 14 was to make sure they studied and passed their reading writing and arithmetic standards so that they could do so.

My Mother and her sister, my Aunt, both left school at 11 (prior to lst World War) because they were clever and passed their standard examinations.

Surely that would be a better incentive for pupils nowadays to buckle down and work both in the classroom and at home, if they could leave school on reaching a certain standard rather than being forced to stay on until 18 years of age - when some of them might have been married for 2 years!!

Has this Government not heard the saying that you can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink!

G in Oxfordshire