In proposing work training in real jobs for unacademic 14-16-year-olds the Government is not heedlessly throwing them out of education altogether. They will continue to study essential subjects at school, and they will go on to apprenticeships at the age of 16. In getting the non-academic out of school and into real work, far more will be done for their education, for their self-respect and for their future than did the egalitarian ideologues who insisted on school and on the same schooling for everyone. For the sake of all our children, academic and non-academic, the Government is to be congratulated on its common sense.

Anthony O’Hear, June 25