Skipper

My picture of blank faced children in St Agnes's school, Longsight Manchester, from 1915 accompanies my thoughts on Alan Johnson's proposal to raise the school leaving age to 18. The World at One ran an item on it today in which it was reported that in the sixties there were 8 million jobs for the unskilled; now there are only 3.5 million and by 2020 there will be only 600,000. It is clearly crucial for young people to acquire some of the skills required to make a contribution, not to mention a living, in our modern economy.

Back in 1915 the majority of jobs were available to the unskilled working classes. Clearly the world of work has been transformed; my question and worry is: have the attitudes to training and education changed accordingly amongst the groups who most need it? Back on February 3rd 2006 I reported on some teaching I had done involving GCSE candidates. My experience was mixed; some groups were attentive and motivated and I think/hope benefited. Others were completely alienated from the introduction I was offering to help equip them the better for the adult world they were soon to join.

No matter how much I persuaded, wheedled, exhorted or finally, begged, they were wholly uninterested and wanted only to subvert my teaching and mess about. Very depressing it was too. Yet these same young subversives had stated they wanted to become civil engineers, barristers, doctors. It used to be said that working class kids lacked ambition but here the mismatch was between their aspirations and attitudes to the means whereby such goals could be achieved. Our relatively low school staying on rate helps explain why our skill levels are low enough to threaten seriously our international competitiveness.

We seem to have produced a large group of people who bring up their children to share the aspiration to achieve the end products of higher education(good) without accepting any of the rigours required for the necessary route to such objectives(disastrous). We learn that Alan Johnson has recently been to Canada and been impressed by their wheeze of with-holding driving licences from young people who refuse to stay on at school; apparently this has drawn in loads of youngsters who would otherwise have drifted onto the labour market bereft of skills.

I wonder if that works though, because it seems to me that if youngsters do not want to stay on in the first place they would be unlikely to exert much effort to benefit from such opportunities even if they were bribed or bullied into doing so. How do we solve this vital preliminary requirement? Search me, but it might be an idea to recognise the problem in the first place.