According to dear leader kids must stay in school until they are 18, does that mean woman on the DPB can now expect 18 years of tax payer handouts?

Everyone in preschool (including health checks and family support).
Specialist dyslexia teachers and classes – years 1-6.
Anti-truancy programmes especially years 7-10 and if necessary special educational centres for the school system misfits.
Community services and resourcing in at risk neighbourhhods etc.

As for the age 16 to 18 area – my preference is in school, or in other training, or work for work experience and work training. But the usefulness of the age 18 level is the ability to intervene (which can still involve permission to work – for work experience if there is some work training upskilling programme plan).

We lack specialist trades teachers – so most schools will have to share such staff at concentrated sites. This might mean people in part-time work or part-time in school while also doing work training at these places.

You’re right.

The only reason I’m bothering to engage Phillip John/Roger Nome on this issue is he claims academic superiority over others. He also claims to quote “pertinent facts and figures’. In other words he claims to post to a higher standard than many others here. That being the case, I’m holding him to that same higher standard – even if it bursts his ego-bubble at times.

It’s Labour good – national bad again from roger.

Pay to ignore him, it’s just feeding the troll to even engage with him. Sometimes I ignore my own advice on this and engage but I always regret it. I could easily just type “Labour good” – “National Bad” 100 times and it would have the same effect as reading his daily rants.

I agree it’s helpful to provide the original data. My concern, as stated, was your commentary (which was a beat-up on National and wasn’t qualified in any way to reflect Labour’s share of responsibility). After reading that comment, I was sufficiently concerned to point out the inherent bias. That’s all I’m saying.

POC – I’ve supplied the links for that information, so people can make up their own minds as to the meaning of the stats, which is more than I can say for most of the right-wing commentators around here.

I am utterly horrified that kids in high schools get away with using text language. Argh.

Not really – KBB just often has some very pertinent facts and figures when it comes to these debates. Hope you don’t mind.

It’s a good idea not to distort pertinent facts and figures – otherwise you’ll be accused of intellectual dishonesty.

Perhaps Cromwell’s speech best sums up the situation.

And I see Labour sources are openly speculating about the existence of a mole on the 9th Floor leaking the speech to National.

Perhaps they need to look no further than a couple of floors down.

If I were them I would be very, very, very, very afraid.

I haven’t thought through the implications of this, but I’ll throw it out there anyway – what if school leaving was made subject to attaining basic levels of literacy and numeracy (enough to carry on with further education later, and enough to take part in the workforce – as well as daily life in the ‘knowledge economy’).

Combine this with Key’s proposals, and we might just have the best of both worlds (or perhaps the worst of bothe worlds??).

and PS woger (“Only if you’re a complete moron who’s so out of touch with reality that they’ll base their beliefs on high flown, uninformed rhetoric over an official OECD report. God you’re an idiot.”) stop talking to yourself online.

Not really – KBB just often has some very pertinent facts and figures when it comes to these debates. Hope you don’t mind.

What a wonderfully expressive paragraph.”

Only if you’re a complete moron who’s so out of touch with reality that they’ll base their beliefs on high flown, uninformed rhetoric over an official OECD report. God you’re an idiot.