How about this as an education system:
He left Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Otley at 14 to train as an accountant
So, grammar school, passed 11 plus (or whatever it was in the 1930s). War service:
He returned to Leeds and resumed his accountancy training, qualifying in 1949.
And:
Glover’s first job was with an accountancy firm in Windsor before joining Price Waterhouse, where he audited several City livery companies including the Watermen and the Fishmongers, of which he was a freeman. He then moved to Deloitte, which posted him to Recife in Brazil.
Etc etc.
So a – reasonably at least – distinguished professional career after leaving school at 14.
Rather than another decade of grievance studies and then…..
And the reason we don’t return to such a system is?
The profs’d lose their profits??
“And the reason we don’t return to such a system is?”
The incentives to vested interests.
“Vested interests” itself sounds like an archaism. I wonder why.
As above, though more recently I wonder whether cookie cutter jobs like (certainly) basic accountancy are going to exist much longer. A young man could always join the infantry, and see the world, though that’s getting less attractive for linked technological reasons too.
As I have said before Tim Henman’s dad was a solicitor without having gone to university.
I think study inflation (increased time needed to get a job) is second only to house price inflation in harming young people – or rather anyone who was a teenager in the 90s onwards.
“And the reason we don’t return to such a system is?”
I suspect this is one of those things where people see certain benefits but because they don’t directly, personally, pay for it, they don’t see the costs.
Like mothers get their free babysitting for a couple more years. And people think their kids can get better jobs because of A levels, degrees even though most of it is signals, and GCSEs are about as accurate a barometer. The kids who get great GCSEs are also the ones who get great A levels, are the ones who get top degrees.
I’ve said for some time that most kids shouldn’t be in school after 14. You’ve done the useful, general learning at that point. There’s a few kids who are going to be scientists, engineers, museum curators, where more formal learning is useful, but most useful learning after that point is specific. The most useful thing that kids learn in their later school years is how to drive.
I reckon kids are probably learning more from YouTube and TikTok than school in their teenage years. They’ll latch onto things that interest them.
David,
“I think study inflation (increased time needed to get a job) is second only to house price inflation in harming young people – or rather anyone who was a teenager in the 90s onwards.”
Most programmers didn’t have degrees in computer science when I started. They were either internally selected and trained in companies or they did a BTEC, which was a 1-2 year course. And I learned more about the job doing a BTEC than a degree would because it was focussed on producing people for the job. Like you learned BASIC and COBOL because those were the most common industrial languages. So you could leave and people would hire you as a junior because you already knew COBOL. Universities were teaching people Pascal which was purer but employers wanted COBOL.
Speaking of archaisms….
Seems the UK Courts has not gone completely bonkers and have actually declared that biological sex-at-birth is the only legal definition of “male” and “female”.
So chicks-with-dicks, or even chopped-off dicks aren’t “female”, however hard they scream.
Who’da thunk it in UK Clownworld….
At my Grammar school in the 60s it was expected that pupils would continue to O level though I remember one or two left at 14 to the disapproval of the Headmaster.
As for software, I never had any formal training or qualifications. With a degree in Electronics I started off designing integrated circuits and got asked to join a software team a few years later. One time the boss’s boss complained that we were spending time writing games and other stuff rather than the real project, so I had to point out to him that we needed to ‘play around’ some of the time as self-training, trying out stuff we’d read about. To his credit he accepted the point.
The most useful thing that kids learn in their later school years is how to drive.
And, nowadays, how to type. I’m glad I managed to get my daughter to do both. Wish I’d learned to type properly.
In my school, typing was only taught to girls, and only those in the lower, no-academic streams.
It was not a fit subject to teach boys.
Funny how things turn out, Then came the explosion of word processors.
I’ve spent most of my professional life typing. With 2-3 fingers.
@Western Bloke
That sounds a wonderful system
Grikath – it’s not looking good for Jolyon “Piss Cock” Maugham.
I suspect more foxes will be brutally murdered by the crossdressing animal botherer.
Dad left school at 14 in 1941 in search of adventure. He was too young for the armed forces, so joined the Merchant Navy and was soon on Atlantic convoys. Finished his naval career as a captain 40 years later.
TtC, I don’t know how you do it. I daren’t type in the command line for fear of making some typo that I don’t catch on proof-reading, and blowing up the whole fucking system. All I ever do is Google for the command I need, then copy and paste.
Grikath, apparently NHS Fife is considering the judgement with regard to Sandie Peggie and Dr. “Beth” Upton.
Considering. Considering complying with the law of the land, that is. I wonder for how long they’ll consider, and what conclusion they’ll reach? And Upton, who looks a nasty, solipsistic, passively-aggressive manipulator to me, can fuck right off. Nasty little ponce.
Norman, they are two separate, but similarly genderbending cases. Today’s ruling:
It came about after the Scottish government included transgender women in quotas to ensure gender balance on public sector boards. Campaign group For Women Scotland argued that sex-based protections should only apply to people born female. – BBC
The Supreme Court (should’ve been abolished 14 years ago) had to rule whether “woman”, for the purposes of the Equalities Act (should’ve been abolished 14 years ago), means “woman”, and similarly whether “sex” means “sex” (yes please).
The Beth Upton case is she said, he-she said stuff involving a messy bag of complaints over employment rights, alleged sexual harassment, alleged bullying, alleged “hate crime” (…14 years ago), and the women’s changing room.
As you say, the law of the land also runs to the Kingdom of Fife. Bluidy Tam Dalyell of the Binns no longer guards the Forth. Note:
Legend has it that “Bluidy Tam” enjoyed on occasion a hand of cards with the devil. During one of these games, the devil, losing, threw the card table at the general. The devil missed and the table flew threw through the window and ended up in a pond on the grounds of the House of the Binns. This tale was passed down through generations of inhabitants of the Binns. In 1870, following a particularly hard drought, a marble topped card table was seen poking through the low waters of the pond. In 1930 the mother of the twentieth century Tam Dalyell asked a local joiner to repair the legs on the table, to find out that the about-to-be-retired tradesman’s first job had been to retrieve said table from the pond.
“I done told you once, you son of a bitch…”
And on the topic of early introduction into the workforce:
He appears to have accompanied Charles I’s expedition to La Rochelle in 1628 (to aid the Huguenots during the Siege of La Rochelle) at the age of thirteen.
I am all for helping the Huguenots, btw. Good blokes.
@ Western Bloke 10.15
When I started *no-one* had a degree in computer science.
Most of the programmers had maths degrees but one of the best was a chemical engineer and one had joined as a school-leaver.