Publication of the week:

PROFESSOR ALAN SMITHERS

Monday 14 April 2008

Alan Smithers, "Why I am against raising the participation age", in C. Ryan (ed.), Staying the course: Changes to the participation age and qualifications (London: Social Market Foundation, 2008), 35-41. ISBN: 1-904899-57-9.

In this essay, Professor Alan Smithers argues that it is wrong to compel young people to remain in education and training to age 18, and the policy "will lead to further alienation and disaffection".

It would be much better to offer an entitlement to two year's education and/or training post-16 to be taken as desired. This would open up opportunites to those who can't wait to get out of school, but who wish to return to learning later.

The Government is peering down the wrong end of a telescope. All it sees is compulsory qualifications for bureaucratic tidiness when it should be going with the grain of human nature.

Professor Smithers' essay features in Staying the course: Changes to the participation age and qualifications. The collection, edited by Conor Ryan (former advisor to Tony Blair and David Blunkett), includes a foreword by Rt.Hon. Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, and is published by the Social Market Foundation.

Professor Smithers presented his arguments against raising the participation age in the debate on 27 March at the House of Commons to launch the publication. He was joined by David Willetts MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Universities, Innovation and Skills. Arguing for a rise in the participation age were Barry Sheerman MP, Chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, and Ann Rossiter, Director of the Social Market Foundation.

Professor Alan Smithers is Director of the University of Buckingham's Centre for Education and Employment Research and for the ten years of Tony Blair's premiership he served as Special Advisor to the House of Commons Education Select Committee. He now advises the Children, Schools and Families Committee.