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The ‘cash for honours' saga may be over, but there is recent news, which suggests that government ministers have become embroiled in bribery and extortion. Fair enough, ‘cash for diplomas' might not have hit the headlines, but it's just as scandalous as anything Lord Levy was accused of. And Gordon Brown is at the heart of it, with local authorities acting as his henchmen. One of the new prime minister's first initiatives was to announce that in future, young people aged 16 to 18 will be forced to remain in education or training. If traditionally raising the school-leaving age to 18 was a socially-progressive policy, today's version smacks of desperation and is, crudely, authoritarian. This seems more about reaching targets than opening up educational opportunities. The Government had originally set itself the task of increasing the number of 17-year-olds in work or training from the current level of around 75%. But the trajectory was up, not down. Those dubbed Neets (‘not in education, employment or training') rose from 10% of the 16 to 18-year-old population in 2004 to 11% last year. So Mr Brown's first ‘big idea' when chancellor was to bribe school-leavers, offering a ‘training wage' to entice them into education, with ‘bonus' payments for those who gained qualifications. This carrot has seemingly failed. Instead, a very big stick has been wielded. Future refuseniks who drop out at 16 will be served with ASBO-style ‘attendance orders' specifying a study course that they will have to enrol on. Breaching these will be a criminal offence, punishable by a £50 fixed penalty or prosecution, with proposed sanctions including community sentences and confiscation of driving licences. Local authorities are expected to police these punitive schemes. The names of all 16 and 17-year-olds will be added to a database held by councils so that they can track participation in education or training. It's been bad enough that since 2002, councils have been criminalising the parents of truants, threatening £2,500 fines or imprisonment. The new measures shift the legal responsibility on to the young person. So, expect an LEA near you to spend endless hours tracking and dragooning ‘older' truants into the nearest FE college. Local authorities will receive £476m a year to employ advisers to ‘help young people to choose suitable forms of training'. But what advise might they give? Neets may be under-qualified, but they are not stupid. Maybe one reason they are leaving education is that they have sussed the paucity of what is on offer. We are told that compulsory education or training to 18 is essential because Britain trails far behind other developed countries in terms of basic skills. More than one in six young people leave UK schools unable to read, write and add up properly. But surely, this is an indictment of state schooling in general. Dare I suggest it would be better to focus on improving education standards far earlier than age 16? Some critics of compulsion have argued that 16-year-olds should be free to leave school and enter the world of work. But a more worrying issue is the way this proposal erodes the distinction between work and education. The problem is not that 17-year-olds will all be force-feed Shakespeare or chemistry – if only. Rather, those compelled to stay on will be fed a diet of work-related skills. Cllr Les Lawrence, chair of the LGA's Children and Young People Board, made this clear when he welcomed the Education and Skills Bill: ‘Every young person needs to gain skills to earn a decent living, and those leaving education too early are at a high risk of being unable to do so'. Effectively, this teaches teenagers that the main reason to be educated is to boost your employability. It may well be dispiriting that so many young people do not embrace further opportunities to learn. But perhaps teenagers have picked up on the instrumentalist attitude to education spouted by their elders. If all schooling amounts to is acquiring a mishmash of skills required by the labour market, what's the point? It's enough to tempt even the most motivated pupil – whatever their age – to bunk off. Claire Fox is director of the Institute of Ideas

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WHITEHALL

Trapping youngsters reveals lack of skills

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