At eight, the world should be your oyster

Anastasia De Waal, 1 February 2010

I used to want to be an astronaut.  I also, aged 10 and a half, thought very seriously for a whole afternoon about becoming a Bond girl.  At other points in my primary school education I just wanted to get full marks in my spelling test.

Unfortunately a new scheme formulated by Hays recruitment agency and supported by the Government will crush these hopes: realism will replace fittingly childish career aspirations and CV composition classes will substitute time otherwise spent furthering reading and writing skills.

This year 38 primary schools across the country will pilot the scheme.  Justifications are two-fold: Martyn Best, director of the programme, advocates introducing children to the variety of post-school possibilities as a way of boosting aspirations, while Ed Balls emphasizes the need to carve early career paths because by the time children turn 14 ‘it is often too late’.  I couldn’t agree more with both. However, as regards rationale number one, the workplace cannot conceivably be recreated in a year 5 classroom.  At this point in the child’s life, careers should be more about content than presentation.  And Ed Balls’s cause for concern is certainly understandable—if you want to be a geography teacher then it’s probably best you enroll on the geography GCSE, but this may mean you can’t take the history course.  Surely resources would be better spent eliminating GCSE timetable restrictions and keeping options open for longer?

The irony of Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson launching a scheme that subjects children to a restraining and redundant realism encapsulates the absurdity of this schizophrenic approach. If my pupils want to learn about rhyme schemes because it will help them write the best song lyrics to perform at the MTV awards ceremony then so be it.

By Annaliese Briggs