Leaving school - is this true?

FBaby

We would risk returning to the secondary school versus grammar school "stigma" that existed when I was at school in the 1960s/70s so they would have to be structured as parallel education streams, not hierarchical, leading to distinct but equally valid qualifications and further educational/career opportunities.

How can't see how this would every happen. In the end, academic skills will always be more valued than vocational ones in many fields, if only because academic skills will always be more transferable across different career paths than vocational ones.

I do think that the system already allows a very high level of flexibility in that regards in this country, much more than other european ones. I also think that there is a danger in children being labelled as non academic and pushed towards the vocational path when their reason for struggling might be very different and in the right circumstances would do very well in Uni. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few people who just about made it to A levels, but then excel at Uni, going all the way to Masters and more.

chris1973

I'm not disagreeing with the general focus of the posts. But a couple of people have said 'there's always jobs in care', and that attitude really annoys me. Do we really want people working as carers who are only there because there's no other jobs?

Unfortunately, in some areas that is the reality of the bulk of the available jobs. There will always be Elderly people in every town, but the same can't be said for large manufacturers and the various smaller material industries and service providers which are often set up to serve them, so where are all of these 'other' jobs you speak of?

*When* there is a Car Manufacturer, Ship Builder, Clothing Manufacturer, Dyson, Samsung, Apple, White Goods & Chocolate factory located in every UK County it will be different, but until that time most of the old mills once employing hundreds of people in a lot of the aforementioned industries have long since closed or have been converted into trendy flats, often taking with them the chance of any work outside of the care industry.

ERICS_MUM

Even if people "have to" work as carers because there are no other jobs, they should work to the best of their ability and respect their patients. Not liking a job is no excuse for not doing it properly. People need to develop some self discipline.