# 77 (2013) It's Time To Deal With Our Burgeoning Graduate Population

Could we please all start directing our school leavers to websites like this, rather than websites like this?

Because if there is one thing I'm fairly sure of, it's that getting school leavers onto work schemes that teach them business skills, social skills, work ethics and gives them an income whilst they are still living at home, has to be better than three years in the hermetically sealed environment of the classroom living off what is essentially a Government handout.

Study rooms give a classroom protected view of working environments which offer them little experience of what life is really like and does not shape them ready for the real world. Additionally, it means that those students who are severely academically lacking may never get a job at all, which probably partly explains our huge problem with youth unemployment.

It strikes me that we don't need any more post-graduate students. We need skilled workers not statistic meeting, classroom boffins. Now, this may seem like a hark back to the old days of the 'class system'. And that's because it is. And what is wrong with the class system? Not everyone is an academic. Not everyone is fit for Government office, and not everyone can be a plumber. We have a class system because we are an animal with a pecking order and you cannot change that no matter how many degrees you introduce or how many times you put up the minimum wage.

There are people who are good with their hands and not their minds and they have huge potential in the job market if they are given the right education and the right direction. Putting vocational students into academic classrooms and converting vocational courses in BA's and MA's kills these students potential because it is sterile and nonconstructive to their needs and abilities.

And because it is all about hitting targets it often makes their industry appear pretentious (I use fashion and Graduate Fashion Week as a case in point) and unrealistic.

We killed off the polytechnic years ago. But the apprenticeship is making a comeback. Businesses are already seeing the advantage to taking apprentices under their wing. But we need more. To me it represents possibly the best chance we have of rescuing our floundering employment market and our lack of properly skilled workers.

Vocational skills are learnt on the job and not in the classroom. They help students to decide what they want to do because they get the opportunity to try the job for real. How many students have gone through the university system only to discover they don't like the industry they spent three years training to join? 

That nothing seems to change year on year just surprises me. Everything seem to be about statistics and league tables these days, not about people and aspirations and abilities. And it just doesn't work. 

Vocational skills are learnt on the job, not in the classroom (source)

# 76 (2013) How Much Is Enough?

Going back into the job market after a four year absence (three years of Uni plus one year of running my own business full time) it's easy to see why your average Joe in full time employment is struggling to make ends meet. Even living in a house share with fairly basic outlays I still have to factor in an additional £287 a month to cover tax and national insurance contributions to leave me just enough money to live on.

This means I still have to find a job that pays me over £1000 a month in order to survive. My second trade before I decided to go to Uni as a mature student was in administration. I spent years as a PA in London and the surrounding counties mostly in the temping market. Then, it was a lucrative business and often lead to good secure full time jobs. But things have changed a lot and temping just scrapes minimum wage these days. Temps aren't trusted as they used to be and I believe this may have something to do with the screening processes at agencies and the lax attitude of some staff. Attitudes that were few and far between when I was working in London. Companies now, seem to presume you're temping because you're not much good, otherwise you'd have a full time job.

I genuinely cannot work out how people with financial commitments like mortgages, children and debts, manage to survive at all. Maybe they don't. Maybe that's why foodbanks are so essential these days. There are plenty of employed people using them. Perhaps we're all living hand to mouth to a certain extent - living in fear of redundancy and hoping things will change.

It's changed a lot from when I was last employed and that wasn't all that long ago. Tax was 17.5% back then. Now it's 20%. The old rate would have saved me £22.38 a month. That may not sound like much of a saving but over the course of a year that's about £268. For a couple that's a holiday or home improvement, or tax and an MOT on a car.

Where does it end? Will tax go up again next year? Will the price of food continue to rise? Will we all just have to get rid of cars, mobile phones, turn off the central heating? The knock on effect of all these things on our economy is catastrophic and in turn makes the little man have to pull in the purse strings another notch.

What's the breaking point? When do we finally say enough is enough, we cannot live like this any more. It strikes me there's probably a way to go yet and more awful stories of how people are struggling will come out. It's going to get messier and more brutal.

And for those of you lucky enough to have no idea what I'm talking about, I hope you never have to.

Last October food bank numbers reached record levels (source)