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November 16, 2006
Alan Johnson on Education
Raise the school leaving age says the Secretary of State for Education for:
The Ontario study, recently cited by Alan Johnson, concluded that the
personal costs of dropping out of full-time education at the age of 16
were high.
From the bio of the Secretary of State for Education:
He attended Sloane Grammar School in Chelsea and left school at 15 without any qualifications.
Just think what he might have done with that extra three years of education! I dunno, got a real job, done something useful like cleaning the streets perhaps?
November 16, 2006 in Academia | Permalink
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Comments
In THIGMOO (This Great Movement Of Ours), Alan Johnson was regarded as a hugely successful trade union leader when he was gen sec of the Communication Workers Union partly or mainly on the strength of him mounting an effective union campaign in the early 1990s against mooted plans of that time to privatise the Post Office.
By reports, he originally made his mark with Blair by being the first of the trade union leaders to support the scrapping of the infamous Clause IV in the Labour Party Constitution. He then made his mark as a minister for higher education in the last Parliament by getting through Parliament contentious government proposals for university students to pay top-up fees when that had been explicitly ruled out in Labour's manifesto for the 2001 election.
On the basis of his record, Blair has evidently come to regard him as someone who can get things done rather than being distracted by pursuit of personal affairs or running vendettas against colleagues - like a few other high-profile politicians we could mention.
Posted by: Bob B | Nov 16, 2006 11:05:07 AM
The State has no business mandating whether or for how long children attend school. It's just not a basic government competence and Alan Johnson should bugger off and keep his nose out.
Posted by: David Gillies | Nov 16, 2006 5:18:39 PM
I wonder why so many governments in affluent market economies maintain statutory minimum school-leaving ages and I've long wondered why the stay-on rate in education and training after the minimum school-leaving age in Britain is so much lower than in most of them?
"Last year, a report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that Britain came seventh from bottom in a league table of staying-on rates for 19 countries. Only Mexico and Turkey had significantly lower rates of participation for this age group. Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and Slovakia have marginally lower rates."
http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,16086,1555547,00.html
The consequences evidently worry the CBI:
"One third of employers have to give their staff remedial lessons in basic English and maths, a survey suggests. Managers said staff needed to be able to use correct spelling and grammar and should be competent in simple mental arithmetic without a calculator. One in five employers said non-graduate recruits of all ages struggled with literacy or numeracy, the Confederation of British Industry poll found."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5263812.stm
According to this bar chart in The Economist, Britain is especially well-endowed with low-skilled young people compared with most other major European economies:
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7843638
Whatever became of Tony Blair's Education, Education, Education?
And what happened to that notion of an e-university for life-long learning that Gordon Brown used to go on and on about in the lead up to the 1997 election?
Posted by: Bob B | Nov 16, 2006 8:14:30 PM
