School curricula change all the time. I feel it is time to ask if we are really equipping our children with skills for life or just pushing them towards a further education career they neither want or need?

What do our young people need to do on leaving school? Applying for (and then retaining) jobs is an obvious one - so they need to be able to read and write adequately, in real words, not text speak. An ability to speak in words of more than one syllable would be an advantage and to think for themselves. In addition to this they need to be able to feed themselves and an ability to cook dishes from their chosen ingredients would be a useful skill. Enough maths that they can balance their bank account and work out how much borrowing money is going to cost them is essential.

In addition a basic knowledge of first aid may prove invaluable to their personal lives and would be a huge boon for society as a whole. A look at anger management and how to manage stress and bullies is now a vital skill to get through life and schools should look at boosting pupil’s self esteem to encourage this. An area of the curriculum devoted to responsibilities focusing on the law and obligations it imposes on us in daily life when driving, running a home, interacting with other people, our rights as employees, etc would enable our youth to cope admirably when they leave school.

It is maybe time to develop a core curriculum for less academically able pupils to ensure that they get extra time to learn the essential subjects rather than be master of none. Pupils leaving school should be able to be contributing members of society as a whole, articulate enough to make sure their opinions are heard and informed enough about financial matters and the law that they cannot be taken advantage of.

As many of our teenagers leave school without these basic skills for living why do we persist with measuring the success of our education system in the number of pupils staying on after 16? Indeed, so that we keep up with other countries in Europe the UK government is looking at making education or training compulsory until the age of 18. When all our school leavers are truly equipped to live independent lives, then it will be time to ask how many go on to university. We owe this to our young people.