Requiring people under the age of 18 to be in training or education doesn’t necessarily mean schools, and if schools can have the power to say “we’re done with this one, he’s a negative influence we can’t change” rather than being forced to keep them on as some are interpreting this announcement, requiring them to take at least some initial direction with things like apprenticeships doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

However it is *just* an idea, and I am as sceptical as any about the governments ability to assure non-school opportunities for young people to get training with adequate support without forcing schools into a position I’m sure they don’t want to get in to, that of keeping kids on that don’t want to be there simply because otherwise they’re going to be fined from that mountain of cash they earn at post-GCSE age.

The priority in educational establishments should be those children who want to learn. Not everyone has the choice to go private and they should not be penalised for their parents economic status.

I don’t believe in consigning any young person to the scrapheap, give disruptive pupils all the help they need but that should not be at the price of dragging willing students down with them. Why anyone on the left or right feels that forcing unwilling students into education will improve society is beyond me.

So give them more money! This would be a much better idea than having another two years of compulsory education within which parents could be fined for not sending their children to school. How’s that supposed to help people living in poverty?

“Yes – you get lots of kids doing really really well until at 16 they’re forced to leave by their cash-strapped parents to go work down the pit, this ending what might have been a glittering academic career.”

This paper (which I have only had time to read the abstract of, it came up on Google when I searched for school drop out rates at 16) suggests that the EMA increased staying on at school after 16 by 4.6% and that people still in school after one year was 6.4% higher. Given that the EMA is fairly meagre (£30 a week I think for children from the poorest families), that suggests to me that financial considerations have a fairly large effect.

Er, no, it doesn’t. If you had actually read the study you linked to, you’d know that it uses statistics from the USA 1970-2003 and Canada 1995-2004.

Yes – you get lots of kids doing really really well until at 16 they’re forced to leave by their cash-strapped parents to go work down the pit, this ending what might have been a glittering academic career.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, there’s two point to make here.

1) If it is financial pressure that’s making pupils leave school, then why not relieve the financial pressures, rather than simply forcing them to stay on?

2) It’s bollocks anyway: most of the hardcore NEETs will come from households where no-one works.

The frequency of this type of experience is probably quite low, but until a few years ago I would have said that a compulsory education age of 18 would be a good thing. Having thought about it a bit further I think real world experience can really have a major influence on the choices made. In that respect at a policy level, it would be better to enhance the opportunities for night time education/part-time education rather than forcing everyone to stay in education till 18.

I think that Sunny and others are right to say that the point is not that beneficial = liberal. I would add to what he said that raising the leaving age might actually be more liberal both in the shorter term and the longer term. You can think about this by imagining what would happen if we lowered the leaving age to 14 say. Now, some 14 year olds from poorer backgrounds would have a strong incentive to seek work rather than stay in education (and this incentive would get stronger over time as low skilled adults pay went down because of the huge extra supply of cheap 14-16 year old labour). This would hurt their liberty in the long term in reduced opportunity, but it also hurts their liberty in the short term, in that rather than choose to hang around at school not doing much, enjoying time spent with friends, etc., they’d have to go and work long hours doing something incredibly boring for meagre wages. Financial pressures are just as much a limit on liberty as those of the state.

The same thing could be happening now for people aged 16, and raising the leaving age could actually free people who are currently pushed into leaving school due to financial pressures.

Chris actually has an interesting suggestion that sidesteps this: raise the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA). If you raised that to the level of what someone could be earning in a job, then people would really have a free choice to go into work or stay in education without a financial incentive one way or the other. I suspect the problem with this is that it would be too expensive to be politically viable, but I haven’t done the sums so maybe not.

BTW, this is an argument in principle as to why this might not be an illiberal measure rather than a positive argument that it is a liberal measure. I’m not 100% convinced of the latter, although I’m slightly more inclined to think it is than it isn’t.

Oh, and since this is my first post to Liberal Conspiracy, let me just take the opportunity to say: nice work Sunny and everyone involved! I think the left really needed something like this.

Help who ? Perhaps the excluded kids and their disinterested parents may not get much help from this approach, but what about those who are left to be educated without further interference and distraction ?

Surely the net gain in education amongst all pupils would be positive once the unruly are excluded ?

I think young people would be better off if they were equipped with a realistic picture of what life is like outside school, not fed all this claptrap about how education will guarantee them better earnings. Education is valuable, and equips you with all sorts of life skills which are desperately needed, but guarantee you higher wages? Not in my experience, or the experience of many other people my age.

Mine is simply that education can be both a social and economic good. It is the best way to tackle poverty, if we are serious as a country and as a Labour Party (if that’s your thing!) in challenging poverty and low aspiration it has to be at least partly through education.

The form that education takes is a different question. The government does need to ensure that there is finally a “parity of esteem” between vocational and academic education. I hold some hope in the new diploma system, but we shall wait and see! It is also vital that other options offered post-16 are directly useful to the young people involved. There are all sorts of things to consider, even, as you suggest, altering the leaving age, allowing college and work placements from 14+ etc.

I think the fight against poverty and low aspiration is, in this case, more important than theories of what is liberal or not. The question should be, what forms of education/ training are available, and how useful are they.

In other words, the government needs to sort secondary education wholesale before it even considers making attendance post-16 compulsory. Tomlinson’s review might well have been the necessary reform, but Labour was too cowardly to abandon A-levels. The diploma scheme now being implemented might help, but I’m not holding my breath. And yes, it most certainly is illiberal to make people do something they don’t want to on the threat of being fined. The scheme needs far more explanation and filling out then what has so far been presented.

I’d like to differentiate between schooling and education, as there seems to be a very arrogant assupmtion spreading that it is ever possible to stop learning, which is backed up by value judgements on the content of that learning which are a matter of opinion.

Whatever happened to continuous, life-long learning? Whatever happened to the university of life?

I’m very suspicious of this highly political move by the highly political Gordon Brown. I’m suspicious of his motives and I’m suspicious of whether it will succeed.

This is social engineering for economic purposes attacking youthful opposition through indoctrination. I always found that open minds were always susceptible to good lessons, but the truth would never penegtrate the gates that had been closed by force.

The education mantra is a sham, whipped up by people like Ed Balls who see blind, obediant loyalty as their most likely route to success. The pitfalls can only be avoided if you can open your eyes. Wider.

The point is that a more educated workforce can only be a good thing for the individuals and the country. If the school curriculum hasn’t suited pupils, it’s the country’s responsibility to ensure that the 16-18 curriculum does, either through school, college or work. There should be no child (young adult) left doing nothing at that age.

If it’s illiberal to say so, then so be it.

The issue of compulsory education per se is an interesting one but falls outside of the point I was making. It doesn’t make much sense to me to assume – as the law presently does – that a 16 year old is old enough to make fundamental life decisions – work and pay taxes, have sexual relations etc. – but not over whether they should stay on in education or not. However, I’d have to say I’m not making an abstract point about liberty; I would be very concerned about the practical implications of this. Chris Dillow had it right (see his blog) when he applied the law of diminishing marginal returns to this because with the kids who would be affected by such a change, this has set in some time before they reach the age of 16. Talk about cost/benefits: very little benefit would be gained from this move but educational institutions would get themselves a whole lot more grief. I doubt you’ll find many teachers who think this is a sensible idea. Let’s be clear about this: you can’t force people to learn and those who end up as NEETS have already resisted schools best efforts to educate them against their will. I see little point in persisting with the charade for a further two years and am delighted that the present Scottish administration appears to agree with me.

On enforcement according to my local paper they’re going to be subject to fines of up to £200 for failing to attend. Quite how they’re supposed to pay said fines if they’re not working is anyone’s guess.

Sunny:

“Taking your position, it is only logical then that children should not be forced to go school at all since it is an inherently illiberal institution. No?

No. Children are bossed around for their own benefit as standard. But if 16- and 17-year-olds are adults — which in some respects they are, and in others they aren’t — they shouldn’t be forced into doing something even if it is for their own good. (If you’re admitting that it’s not a liberal proposition then it seems curious appearing on a website that claims to be promoting liberal ideas.)

I’m just shy of 25 years old. Right now, of all the people I was friends with at school, the two who are best off are the ones who left and got jobs. One’s already running his own business. If I was 16 or 17 and wanted to go and do that, but someone was forcing me to stay in education or training, I’d be mad as hell.