The Unemployed Young

February 17, 2011 By Malcolm Blair-Robinson

These figures rightly cause dismay. They are the worst in Europe. That is humiliating. They are also the product of the outrageous outcome to all the years of ideological meddling in education by misguided politicians and crackpot academics.

It does not matter what you call schools or how you organise them, whether Academy, Comprehensive, Faith, or Free. What matters is that the national average of the state sector is that fewer than half the students can obtain a basic (c) pass in five subjects including English and Mathematics at GCSE. A good number go on to get degrees which are useless in the labour market and shunned by employers. Put this right and all else will follow.

Fail to do so and nothing will work, least of all the young. A country which wastes the most precious resource it has, the rising generation, will neither be successful, nor deserve to succeed.