The school leaving age should be cut to being as low as the average pupil in England and Wales can count, a former chief inspector of schools has said.
Sir Chris Woodhead told the Times that allowing pupils to leave school at the age of 14 rather than the current 16 would allow the average student to comprehend the date at which they would be free to join the back of their nearest dole queue.
He told the paper, 'Can you imagine being at school and told you will be allowed to leave your formal 'education' at the age of 16, when you can only count as far as 14?'
'They would simply have no comprehension as to when this occasion would be, leading to widespread fear and panic that their two-bit education could run and run perpetually with no defined end in sight.'
'Some might argue of course that this endless fear and waiting is the perfect training for what they can expect when seeking their first job upon leaving school, but that's clearly not the responsibility of the educational authorities.'
The former inspector outlined his hopes that in the future, teaching standards would drop to such an extent that school leavers would lack the mental faculties to recognise the futility of their plight out in the real world.
'Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a situation whereby leavers lived in a blissful world where they couldn't cotton on to the fact that their lives forthwith would be as shit as their education was?'
'Just perfect.'
