Left school at 14

HANDS up all those of you who hated school and wished you could have left at 14.

According to the former chief inspector of schools Chris Woodhead you'd have been better off out at work, learning a trade.

He's urging the Government to cut the school-leaving age to 14. "It is a common sense solution to a growing problem,"

Mr Woodhead said. "There is a significant minority who will have made as much progress as they are going to by the time they reach 14. Often, for them, going to school is a waste of time. It involves ritual humiliation for them and they know they are no good in an academic sense.

"They would be better off in the workptace learning something they are good at or something they enjoy."

Mr Woodhead would only attach two conditions - that they had achieved basic standards of literacy and numeracy and had a job already lined up. He says forcing them to stay on studying subjects in which they have not the slightest interest or the faintest aptitude for is a recipe for truancy and classroom disruption.

Let them go out to work and free up teachers to teach those who want to be taught. "There are many who think that it is best to keep people in education for as long as possible. But there is no economic argument to back that up. "In this country we are desperately short of tradesmen and craftsmen. It is not all about getting people into university, getting them degrees for the so-called knowledge economy, which the Government seems obsessed with." Amen to that.

Britain is short of at least 120,000 skilled craftsmen, such as plumbers, bricklayers and electricians. There's good money to be made for anyone willing to buckle down and learn a trade. But a friend of mine, a foreman in a big building firm, says they can't recruit apprentices for love nor money. Kids are turning out of schools thinking they should be free to "express themselves". And that means not getting their hands dirty. No one appears to have told them the world doesn't owe them a living. So they take the easy option, drift into worthless courses and phoney "training" schemes and end up on the dole, flipping burgers or dealing drugs. Not that there's anything wrong with flipping burgers. Someone's got to do it. But how many youngsters spending their days asking if you'd like fries with that would have made excellent chippies or plasterers? Plenty of my contemporaries left school at 15, learned a trade and are now doing very nicely, thank you, many of them running their own successful companies.

This Government could be doing much more to promote proper skills and create a new generation of talented craftsmen and engineers is.by cutting the school leaving age and encouraging apprenticeship schemes, through generous tax incentives and grants.

But it would rather youngsters lolled around for years filling their heads with drivel on worthless "degree" courses in bogus " universities. The only thing they're qualified for at the end of it is one of those ludicrous non-jobs out of The Guardian. Or flipping burgers. So, guess what. They join the transphobic harassment outreach diversity co-ordinating classes, where they become an expensive drain on society rather than useful, productive, wealth-creating members. The real purpose of New Labour's "education, education, education" is "indoctrination, indoctrination, indoctrination". They want to churn out millions more people like them - bureaucrats, social workers, "human rights" activists, researchers, monitors, inspectors, lecturers.

In other words, a bunch of gormless, self-righteous losers on the public payroll who can be guaranteed never to vote Tory. Old Labour wanted to build the Conservatives out of power by covering the country with council estates.

New Labour intends to stay in power by carpeting the country with council employees. Not dustmen, or parkies, or roadsweepers, mind you. But people like them - Guardianistas or a party built on the political subscriptions of trades union members - electricians, engineers, boilermakers, shipyard mechanics, toolmakers - New Labour has a snobbish disregard for manual labour. They seem to think true fulfilment can only be found by sitting on a sub-committee, or setting targets in triplicate, or defending the "human rights" of terrorists and paedophiles, on legal aid.

The trouble with tradesmen, especially those who go on to become self-employed and run their own companies, is that they have an alarming tendency to think for themselves, instead of signing up for the whole Guardianista agenda. And what they don't want is government interference, regulatian or high taxation - the lifeblood of this Government New Labour wants peopIe on the public teat so it can frighten them with the prospect of "Tory cuts" come election time.

This Government is obsessed with "human rights". But what greater human right can there be than to give someone a chance to fufil their potential, to develop valuable skills, to hold down a proper iob, earn a decent wage and make a full contribution to society? And if that means letting them leave school at 14, so be it.