Opinion: Compulsory education misses the point

I see little that is connected or logical in the education debate. It needs to be pitched around learning, not education or schooling. Tom Bentley, former director of Demos and David Blunkett's ex-special adviser on education, has written that learning may take place increasingly "beyond the classroom'" - new technologies mean it is no longer constrained by bricks and mortar.

The issues are essentially twofold: the 'width' of learning (in school, in the workplace, in the community) and the 'length' of learning (the age range). These have been captured as ideas about life-wide and lifelong learning. But there is the crucial question: what for? Too many young people are buckling down to achieving formal academic qualifications and then discovering that it does not lead to jobs commensurate with that achievement. But without them, they are heading nowhere.