Jim Crowther wrote to uk.transport.london on Mon, 17 Jan 2005:

What's worse, there seems very little vocational training available for
14+ year-olds who are not academic. This maybe why we have so
many chavs on the streets, and such a paucity of trained engineers
(lowercase to stop offending some IEEE members) / mechanics /
technicians / etc.

Actually, there is the excellent NVQ scheme, which starts of at about
GCSE standard and goes up to the equivalent of degree standard. Sadly,
it's perceived as inferior to GCSEs, in spite of one NVQ being deemed
equivalent to 3 of them (which causes much sucking of teeth by Disgusted
of Tunbridge Wells, as you can imagine), and the on-the-job training,
which is such a valuable part of the NVQ training is not, of course,
available to 14-year-olds.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 2 January 2005