I'd like to see kids out of school at 14. I'd give everyone 7 years of further free training or education after that.
In England we are admitting our GCSE exams were never worth spit and that coursework is a dud method. I suspect what we aren't doing is admitting how useless education really is for most people. Having kids in school so they can commune with each other and be minded until 14 is fair enough. The few who can benefit from academic study need to be encouraged to both fit in with the rabble and be given the chance to establish learning fellowship amongst themselves. Much of this could now be a university of the air. The plan in England is to go back to exams, strangely at 16 given the assertion school is to be forced on everyone until 18. We had a plan for grammar schools, technical and secondary moderns once. The current lunacy is really just a reversion to that. Our grammar and public schools broadly taught dross about classics and empire. >From what I see walking the dog, our schools fail to do much with most kids. Litter is a big problem. I tested three 101 classes for research purposes last year to see if any of them could write spreadsheet cells and do literature search. That was 110 people and the results were zero. Extending the test a bit into such matters as which are the world's largest manufacturers (some of these people have economics at A level) or the origins of world wars in trade and finance also zilch. In front of these know-littles was a 101 programme about learning a few chapters of books in order to answer questions based on them. Work makes more sense as education than this. --
