The Spectator’s Notes
The Spectator’s Notes
Charles Moore's thoughts on the week
Why is it good to make pupils stay on at school until they are 18? Under the Bill promised in the Queen’s Speech this week, state education will be compulsory for two more years unless the pupil is employed under an apprentice or training scheme. The political reason behind this is the government’s anxieties about young people known as NEETS (Not in Employment, Education or Training), of whom there are now about a quarter of a million aged 16 to 18. Obviously it would be good, in what people call the ‘knowledge economy’, if more of those trying to enter it had some knowledge. But it does not follow that forcing education on them will help. There are already huge problems of truancy, and of disruption of classes by those who do not want to be in them. This will get much worse if disaffected 16–18 year olds swell their number. Small firms not able to afford training will not be allowed to hire this age group. As a result, the experience of work (though not what is laughingly described as ‘work experience’) will be denied thousands of young people who would be the better for it. The reform typifies the dominant theme of current legislation — the need to show good intentions, combined with an absolute lack of interest in the actual result.
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J. Grieve
November 8th, 2007 8:35pmWas Mr Moore at Sandringham when two shots were fired and the hen harriers fell out of the sky? If not, what makes him think that there was no crime? Is he suggesting that it was all a figment of the witness's imagination or that they were not hen harriers? If the Police are right and there was a crime is Mr Moore suggesting that the suspects must be one or more unidentified armed men who happened to be roaming around Sandringham very near Harry and his friends?