School leaving plan slammed by expert (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

School leaving plan slammed by expert

9:08am Friday 23rd March 2007 in Swindon By Gazette Reporter

Proposals to keep young people in education or training until the age of 18 are flawed, according to one of the town's education experts.

Under the Government's plan, from 2015, all young people would be required to remain in some form of education up until their 18th birthday.

It would mean raising the education leaving age for the first time in 43 years.

Teacher David Parkinson, who also runs the Kip McGrath Tutoring Centre, in Westlea, said that prolonging the education experience is unlikely to benefit a great number of pupils.

He believes that the money set aside for the new initiative would be better spent on providing vocational courses at an earlier age.

Education And Skills Secretary Alan Johnson launched the Green Paper, Raising Expectations, this week in response to the Leitch Review, which stated that British businesses would need more skilled employees to remain globally competitive.

He said: "It's not good for the economy or for young people if they leave school at 16 without the skills they need to succeed in the world of work.

"With fewer low skilled jobs we need more high skilled young people and this means spending more time in training or education.

"As a nation we've toyed with the idea for almost 100 years, now is the time to make it a reality for all."

But Mr Parkinson says that many pupils are unlikely to have the desire to remain in full-time education for an extra two years.

He said that the increased education and training would only benefit pupils who are more academically minded.

"There are so many children that are not provided for in full-time education at the moment," he said. "Perhaps it would have been better to address that problem first before trying to extend the leaving age to 18.

"If you have got a lot of children who don't want to be in the education system up to 16 there is probably going to be just as many, if not more, who don't want to stay on until 18.

"I think you need to make more vocational courses available at an earlier age to give those children the tools to be able to make a career for themselves.

"And if the funding they are planning to put into extending the school leaving age is put into that direction it would make a real difference."