As someone who failed miserably at secondary school (mainly due to being an awkward little **** and not liking the education system/teachers who think they can talk down to you simply because they are the authority), I think the education system needs reform.
Some children simply aren't academic, not necessarily meaning they are less intelligent just some people thrive in that environment and others do not, I feel the current system not only stifles the education of the more academic pupils but also at the same time writes off the pupils who do not do so well under that particular regime of schooling.
Its a fact some people are better at certain things than others and I feel school policy right now is trying to homogenize the varying degrees of aptitude and and academic ability (in my opinion separate things which perhaps by 15 may not be evident) and ending up with a system that fails the most academic and consigns some equally "clever" students to fall by the wayside, which, is a disgrace. Dont get me started of the removal of competition between children in schools, tl;dr... how the ever loving **** as a child are you supposed to learn what you are and are not good at if you cant be better or worse than someone else????
I digress, grammar schools properly implemented and the current 'state schools' taking a more college approach to teaching and as **** as its current implementation a more vocational form of teaching and in my opinion, keep the core Science, Maths English and History... then how about teach trades??? Stuff these 'less academic' kids are actually going to use.
I know some people are just simply not very clever or cannot be helped, but from personal experience they'll cause less disruption to a hands on type of education than that of an traditional academic one.
Well.... that was a long winded too many beers rant
Just to finish, I left school with my highest GCSE being a D, at one point the board of governors voted to expel me, not the suspended come back after a week but the "we are unable to continue to offer a place at this school for your son" kind of expelled. I'm 29 now, I own a fairly-ish successful electrical firm employing 16 people ad regularly take on apprentices from the local college and keep in contact with some of my old down to earth teachers.
Not sure if this makes any sense, had one beer too many!