Time off during advance education

19lottie82

I'd be interested to see if / how they actually enforce making 16/17 year olds stay in education if they don't work.

Is it realistic?

peachyprice

Spendless wrote: »

No they don't have to be doing A levels just some form of education or working with training. It says it in the link proivided by debjay.


This doesn’t have to mean only staying in school, it can be:

full-time education, eg at a school or college
an apprenticeship
full-time employment (over 20 hours a week) combined with part-time education or training
You’ll have to stay in some form of education or training until you turn 18, if you started year 11 in September 2013 or later.

Some schools offer courses in BTECs as well as A levels. I'm aware of at least one near me that does.

I'm aware of that, but there will be pupils who will not apply themselves to get a place on a college course because they have no idea what they want to do and apprenticeships are really not that easy to come by.

If education is compulsory will schools be forced to provide their existing under-achieving puplis with an education? Will they be doing GCSE's for an extra 2 years or will they be booted out.

It's all very well to say that everyone has to stay in education, but there aren't enough places after 16 on the popular courses as it is, goodness knows where all these extra places are going to come from if the schools won't have to provide extra space for anyone not doing A levels.

DD's school at the moment is the only one out of three local schools that has a sixth form, hopefully the other two will now have to pull their fingers out and open one themselves because between DD's school and the college there just isn't going to be enough places for all these children, not to mention those that come out of area.

Dunroamin

peachyprice wrote: »

I'm aware of that, but there will be pupils who will not apply themselves to get a place on a college course because they have no idea what they want to do and apprenticeships are really not that easy to come by.

If education is compulsory will schools be forced to provide their existing under-achieving puplis with an education? Will they be doing GCSE's for an extra 2 years or will they be booted out.

It's all very well to say that everyone has to stay in education, but there aren't enough places after 16 on the popular courses as it is, goodness knows where all these extra places are going to come from if the schools won't have to provide extra space for anyone not doing A levels.

DD's school at the moment is the only one out of three local schools that has a sixth form, hopefully the other two will now have to pull their fingers out and open one themselves because between DD's school and the college there just isn't going to be enough places for all these children, not to mention those that come out of area.

Most of them will be doing some knd of "apprenticeship", not staying in education.

peachyprice

Dunroamin wrote: »

Most of them will be doing some knd of "apprenticeship", not staying in education.

What kind of 'apprenticeship' though? Proper trade apprenticeships are hard enough to come by, so what will they be doing? Starbucks barista 'apprenticeships' and other such Mickey mouse ones that only call them apprenticeships so that they can employ young people for £2.68 an hour? It's hardly what this 'compulsory education' was meant for surely.

As an aside, this doesn't directly concern me, DD is only in yr 8 and is top set, expected to do A levels anyway, but I appreciate many aren't as fortunate.

maman

peachyprice wrote: »

What kind of 'apprenticeship' though? Proper trade apprenticeships are hard enough to come by, so what will they be doing? Starbucks barista 'apprenticeships' and other such Mickey mouse ones that only call them apprenticeships so that they can employ young people for £2.68 an hour? It's hardly what this 'compulsory education' was meant for surely.

As an aside, this doesn't directly concern me, DD is only in yr 8 and is top set, expected to do A levels anyway, but I appreciate many aren't as fortunate.

Of course it's not and you're right but I don't see how a young person opting for the alternative (no education, no job and no apprenticeship) is a good option either.

peachyprice

maman wrote: »

Of course it's not and you're right but I don't see how a young person opting for the alternative (no education, no job and no apprenticeship) is a good option either.

But before they could have got a proper job with proper wages. Now employers will be able to employ the same 16/17 year olds for a pittance as long as they provide some element of 'education', or many won't bother at all because it will cost them.

It seems like this is playing into the hands of large corporations to provide them with cheap labour while freezing out the small businesses who won't be able take on youngsters because they can't provide the educational element.

Sorry OP, I've taken your thread way off topic, I'll shut my trap now

Spendless

Not sure how they are implementing it. Previously those kids couldn't sign on anyway (unless in certain circs like estranged from families) so their family 'supported' them being a NEET. It was announced some years ago though for the changes to be put through, think son was around 6. He's in yr9 now. Interested to see it only mentions until 18th birthday, which for most students falls during upper sixth year or equivalent. Did wonder how that was going to be enforced once someone was legally an adult.

Son's school which is the only one in the area without a 6th form is pushing for one for this reason, the other schools that they've prev attended will now be fuller with their own students.

Dunroamin

peachyprice wrote: »

What kind of 'apprenticeship' though? Proper trade apprenticeships are hard enough to come by, so what will they be doing? Starbucks barista 'apprenticeships' and other such Mickey mouse ones that only call them apprenticeships so that they can employ young people for £2.68 an hour? It's hardly what this 'compulsory education' was meant for surely.

It never was "compulsory education" though. As long as they're doing something like NVQ in Customer Care, that would be sufficient. At least they'll be doing something vaguely constructive and some of the schemes aren't bad, just like YTS.

NB
Before 2010 there was no NMW for apprentices any way.

Dunroamin

peachyprice wrote: »

But before they could have got a proper job with proper wages. Now employers will be able to employ the same 16/17 year olds for a pittance as long as they provide some element of 'education', or many won't bother at all because it will cost them.

It seems like this is playing into the hands of large corporations to provide them with cheap labour while freezing out the small businesses who won't be able take on youngsters because they can't provide the educational element.

Sorry OP, I've taken your thread way off topic, I'll shut my trap now

Although I appreciate your worries, only 5% of 16 year olds were actually in employment anyway and some of those would have been in jobs with training, so we're not talking about vast numbers.

http://www.ukces.org.uk/assets/ukces/docs/publications/employers-recruitment-of-young-people.pdf

Caroline_a

One of the issues we have in this country is that a large part of the population doesnt put any value on education. So it becomes 'cool' to dip out of school, to be bad at maths, and to be claiming benefits. Compared with many other societies who value learning, and embrace it with open arms, often our children find out too late that they should have stayed at school, and remained in a learning situation.

Not that academia is right for everyone, but learning doesn't have to be about that. In particular our girls seem to aspire to being famous, pout a lot, and become orange with false hair and nails. Yes, a huge generalisation I realise, but it is worrying that this appears to be a big pull for many of our girls, when their grandmothers and great grandmothers fought so hard to get education for all.

Our young people need to step up and take responsibility for themselves - neither the Government or the general business world are there to provide jobs for them. They need to make themselves employable so that businesses will want to employ them, and pay a fair wage for their labour. If that involves an apprenticeship on low money, or A levels and uni with debt and time, then they need to find the best way for themselves to get there. If it doesn't work then they need to find ways to go around the problem.

Sitting on their bottoms watching Jeremy Kyle is not a career choice!

(Apologies for hi-jacking thread, I thought it fitted with what had already been said)