To think that our current system of schooling is doing serious damage to society by failing those non-academic kids at risk of becoming disaffected young adults?

[myredcardigan]

I'm just ranting about this really because I seem to be posting this over and over again so it's obviously relevant to so many threads.

Seriously though, I think we need to do something about/for those kids who get to 14 and start to hate the thought of school. They're bored, they have no interest in academic work and they see no point in being there.

If those kids who aren't academic were offered something different,something worthwhile it could change the path they're heading down.

If a bored, truanting 14yr old was told she could study hairdressing for example, she'd have far more impetus to come to school.

But instead we force her to sit through English, maths, French and for what? It's not as if pummelling her with them for the next two years she is going to become proficient in them,is it?

We need to send these kids out into the world with something more useful than a school record which shows frequent absences and permanent exclusion. The least they deserve is a bit of direction.

Ok,rant over!

I think 14 is too young to choose tbh, given the choice lots of able and not bored 14 year olds would choose something hands on over something academic, and I think the vocational courses can be seen as the easy option.

Something more should be done about the teaching in schools, when I was in school most lessons were spend copying out of text books or off the board- mind numbing. I also agree with teaching proper cooking skills and housekeeping.

the whole thing seems bizarre, currently 14 or even lower for chosing has to be right - but perhaps that will give those kids who do NVQ's to do a proper job with a porper qualifiation - instead of what i suspect is just keep ing them occupied whilst the brighter kids get on with it.

hopefullt when kids start leaving at 18 kids who made the choice at age 14 can leave with an earning potential equiv.

Actually, I think you'd find that lots of the type of 14yr old I'm talking about, especially the boys, would say, 'I'd love to be a builder.' By the time they're 16 they've spent another 2yrs feeling like failures,being told they're not wanted and no longer have any interst in learning anything.

Custy, you are absolutely right that the danger is in occupying these kids rather than teaching them.

But this girl last night had nothing to look forward to and nothing to be proud of and say she had achieved. She didn't know who Gordon Brown was and as she approached the Houses of Parliament she thought it was Buck Palace. That's our fault as much as hers.

YANBU for wanting that but YABU for assumung it does not happen, that is the way education is going although there is still the need for maths and english so they do their appreticeships, vocational training but get the maths and science in a way that is relevant to what they want to do.

I'm not sure I think there's a danger of shoving kids into poorly paid jobs if we push vocational courses too much, I earned 20 quid+ a week from 14-17 as a saturday girl at the hairdressers and it was only towards the end of my course I realised what crappy wages hairdressers got. Then went back to resit the failed GCSE's to go to college.

Also it's a real struggle to find suitable apprenticeships for all these kids, lots drop out after the first year because they struggle to find someone to take them on, if the volume was increased this would be even worse.

I agree with all your points, myred, but I won't go as far as to take personal responsibility for the mind blowing ignorance of those girls on TV last night.

Their parents are responsible for that - that girl was brutally ignorant and appeared to want to fight anybody who tried to teach her anything. No teacher or educational establishment did that to her. Obviously she comes from a home that does not value even basic awareness of the world around themselves.

'Northerners are trampy like'. What can you say.

My grandparents (both sets) were uneducated and did not aspire to professional employment, but they taught their children respect and gave them a desire to learn fgs.

I remember being almost in tears on a bus recently. There was a Vicky Pollard-esque very young mum with her kids on the top deck. All swearing, hitting each other etc and mum instigating most of it. One of the smaller kids said 'Mum, can we go in there one day?' and pointed to the library as we went past it. Her mum said 'Aye fucking right, I'm not a fucking snob, I wouldn't go in that shithole if you paid me, shut the fuck up' etc and the kid was silenced.

As was the entire bus, feeling just like me no doubt. We have millions of young people who not only didn't enjoy school, they actively hate it, and anything else to do with any kind of engagement with their wider community. I'd love to think we could have saved that girl by offering her vocational training but we can only do so much when faced with aggressive ignorance like that.

Perhaps starting to value vocational training is the way to break the cycle, but unless there are jobs in their chosen fields waiting for them, they may end up feeling even more alienated.

Quite sgm.

totally agree, i am not academic in the slightest and it took me until i was 24 to realise this and give up stuggling with trying to get my A-Levels(i repeatedly failed my GCSEs), i did a beauty therapy course instead which suited me down to the ground.

if there had been the option to do starter levels of beauty, hairdressing etc at school and then to do the higher certificate at college i would have been qualfied at 18.

instead there was the pressure to do college and unversity which really wasnt me.

i still felt like a failure though when i finished my beauty course because it wasn't a degree

Some schools already do this, My friends son only goes into school three days a week , The other two days are off site , one at college and one in a workplace lined to the college course. Interestingly I was talking to the girl who washed my hair at the hairdressers about these kind of courses. She thought they were really unfair on people like her who tried hard at school and went into hairdressing at sixteen. She said it felt wrong to her that people who messed around at school would be allowed to do a vocational course at 14, and by 16 be doing better than her, because they had already done the very junior work,

Twinset, I know this is changing and starting to happen but it's not universal enough. IMO, it should be like GCSEs, ingrained in the school philosophy and available to all kids regardless of which school they attend.

FFF, I'm sure if you had started at 14 and were well qualified by 18 then you would have been on a more livable wage than having to start later. I'm sorry tohear you feel like you have failed because you do not have a degree. That's the very notion we should be challenging.

I read something interesting once which said,
that instead of trying to get 50% of 18yr olds into university which statistically will have a nominal affect of the country's productivity we should be concentrating on making sure that 90% of 18yr olds could reach level 4 in the Y6 SATs (by 18)as this would boost the economy by something like 20%(cannot remember exact figure but along those lines) So basically make sure that adults are literate and have basic maths skills.

myredcardigan- i don't feel like that now, but at the time i felt like right thickie because everyone i knew was at university. when ds i older im planning to go back to college to train in holistic therapies.

im definitly not going to pressure ds into acedemia if he's not suited to it, i would rather he was doing something he enjoyed and was happy than struggling in something not suited to him to satisfy(sp?) government targets.

I think there is an important difference, though, between car mechanics and 'running a household'. The first is a skill, not least because you can get paid to do it. The second is, well, kind of what happens when you live in a house. I'd be worried that the second, in our current overly-gendered society, would be a way of teaching non-academic girls to be Good Wives. Not sure I want that for my daughters, frankly. Whereas I would rather like them to be able to mend the car.

I think that girl on the Prescott thing is a bad example. She obviously has a lot of issues.

But I have worked with many young people who didnt have a link between school and college. The subjects they had a school had no relevence to getting a job. Most GCSEs are only relevant for those that go into highter education.

There is a huge need for more vocational schooling. With the exception of Maths and English as so many jobs require GCSE.

I agree with you too
I think it's relevent to so many threads because it is relevent to society in general.
These non academic young people are not being given a sense of self worth

I think girls like the one on last night's programme show that we have a serious problem brewing. It seems very Un-PC to talk of an underclass but that's exactly what she is part of. We need to do something to stop kids like her falling through the cracks.

If you have always wanted to be able to type, red, then get on a free website or buy cheap software and teach yourself.

Why waste time lamenting something which is so easy to learn yourself

I waste exactly zero time lamenting over it. I just feel it would have been nice to have been given the option of learning the skill.

Isn't that what the new diplomas are suppoed to acheive?

they are aimed at students aged 14 ish, and offer vocational courses.

But surely 14 is a little young to decide which vocation you htrink you'd like to do?