There are not enough apprentices

to service the building industry now or in the future. There are not enough apprentices for plumbing, the electrical trades and much more. Why?

When I was at school (yes, I know this sounds boring) we had a rather different system. The system divided kids up. At the end of primary school you went to either a "high" school or a "technical high" school. It was a bit like the "grammar" and "secondary modern" system in England.  If you happened to go to an "area" school you would be similarly divided into "PEB" (public examination board) or "Area" (school based). The "smart" kids went to high school or did PEB. The other kids did the more practical subjects. Even within high schools there were academic streams and you knew where you stood in the academic pecking order.  

All that changed when committees of people decided that this was the wrong way to treat delicate teenage minds and we needed just "high" schools and no technical schools at all. England went over to "comprehensive" schools at around the same time. Woodwork, metalwork, domestic science, dressmaking and the like faded away. You don't want students doing that because the idea is that everyone aims for university and, in this state, you hope that around eighty percent of them will get the necessary marks to get there.

Of course this means two things. The first is that those practical skills are no longer seen as valuable. They do not lead to university entrance. The second is that, in order to meet the target of so many more students going to university, the standard has to be much lower. It has worked. We no longer have students who know which end of a hammer to hold or how to measure up and calculate something. I read essays from students aiming for university who cannot actually write an essay at all. The best students are still very good of course. Some of them are outstanding but they are in the minority. 

I may be wrong but I do not believe university for so many is the answer. There are too many people I know who wish they had gone and discovered a trade at a technical college instead. They say it would have been "more useful". I listen to them talking about the way so many other things would not work without the people with the practical skills...and they are right.

Exams finished for year twelve (our final year) last Friday. The library will be deserted today. The worried faces will be gone - for a while. I hope they do well or, as the Senior Cat would put it, as well as they deserve to do. Some of them might have done even better if they had been given a chance to learn those practical skills.