School leaving age should be 14 not 18

I seem to remember a while ago the Conservative party considered reducing the school leaving age to 14 - ( can't remember the details - someone drop me a comment if you can ). NuLabour want to increase it to 18 !

For a sizeable number of people school stops having a point after about 14. These people need to get some self respect from working and succeeding - rather than being forced to be humiliated and fail until they are 18.

Education can happened at any time of your life. I personally returned to University at 26 years old and did an OU postgraduate diploma in my (still just current) 30's. I got much more out of them with real world experience.

We have an aging population which the government thinks means we must surrender our country and children's future to waves of immigration from cultures that are trying to colonise rather than integrate into our country and then they go and do this ! (Which removes up to 4 working years of peoples useful lives - more if they get conned into going to New media studies at University.)

The only real beneficiaries will be those members of the client state who run the schools, colleges and half baked training schemes.

It takes away further young peoples ability to make something of themselves - all these course and training programs sap personal confidence as you end up in a position where a certificate is needed for everything - even working in a shop.

This policy is typically stupid - self interested ( more client state voters for Labour), but worse of all will crush the spirits of many less academically able youngsters who could be out making their own way in the world, instead of being held captive by the socialist state.

IMHO - of course. Now really must get some work done today !

update: See Simon Heffer on the same subject this Sat here..