Recognise hard work and reward success

Nov 7 2007 By Keith Hann for The Journal

MOST of the seriously rich people I know left school at the earliest opportunity, with minimal academic qualifications.

They learned practical skills in their first job, then applied them to setting up businesses of their own.

They worked ferociously hard in those early years, and had the strength of character to bounce back from their inevitable mistakes and failures.

These people weren’t well enough educated to realise that they were entrepreneurs.

They found that out later, from the brighter or at any rate more highly qualified people they were brave enough to recruit to support them, and to whom they learned to delegate without necessarily surrendering control.

In the light of these and many similar practical examples, what exactly is the point of the barmy idea of raising the school leaving age to 18?

(You can tell the world is going mad when 16- and 17-year-olds are being deprived of the right to buy tobacco or go to work, but told they’re mature enough to vote.)

The main driver of the Government’s whole education policy seems to be the pursuit of national economic advantage by raising the skill levels of the workforce.

Yet the enormous influx of migrant workers over the last 10 years has had nothing to do with their superior qualifications (though I have come across East European medics working as house painters) and everything to do with their willingness to get off their backsides.

I remained in full-time education until I was 24, but all the practically useful stuff had been imparted by the age of 11: particularly how to read, write and add up.

Six years at one of Britain’s elite universities served mainly to encourage the snobbish belief that “going into trade” would be a bit below my dignity.

If the Government really wants to promote our prosperity, it should focus on sorting out primary education, to ensure that its products master the basics. Reverse the dumbing down of examinations so that they again become meaningful qualifications.

Recognise hard work and reward success, which also means allowing some to fail.

Promote business creators as role models, encourage aspiration, and crack down on the benefits culture so that the only way up is hard work and the willingness to try and try again.

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