Actually you can do Horse Care at an awful lot of posh girls' schools! Its interesting they've chosen horse care, actually, because I do know something about the quality of people coming out of college/school with Equine Studies certificates. They know NOTHING. Seriously, nothing. They can usually ride reasonably well, but to be fair, msot of them could ride reasonably well before they went to college...They can usually bandage to a decent stadard, but they can rarely plait properly or quickly, they don't know how to fit a double bridle, they know next to nothing about equine anatomy or physiology, although that's meant to be a major part of the course...

It depends really whether we want children to go to school for an education or for qualifications.

I guess by 14 a lot of children have learnt all they are going to learn, and therefore vocational qualifications then have a place.  but horse care - is that really a necessary part of anyone's education?

The more I think about it, the more I contradict myself.  For the upper class non-academic girls that are never going to be chamber maids or waitresses, I guess horse care is as good a way to spend their time as any.  Still doesn't make it a qualification though...

Not all children are academic. Vocational courses offer them a better choice. I don't think any of the schools around here offer horse care but ES school offer hair dressing and has it's on salon.

Really? A school with its own salon? How cool! I know lots of colleges have salons, but never thought about a school having one. Is it open to the public?

I've really changed my stance on this issue recently. I used to be absolutely pro-academia, i thought that all children should have a solidly academic education to 16, blah blah blah. But I don't think that way any more. There's no point in running such a system, because as others have said, msot non-academic children have learned all they're really going to need academically by the age of 14.

I honestly think that the real challenge is to put vocational/practical qualifications on a moral par with academic ones. We're very snotty in this country about it being somehow second-class to do vocational qualifications -and yet we're hopelessly suspicious of people who are too clever , and we have the concept of being "over-qualified" for jobs as well, We can't have it both ways. We need to accept that ther is real value in vocational qualifications for all pupils, and that there is no shame in opting for a more vocational path. Of course, this argument was a lot easier to make when we actually had a manufacturing industry to point at for good examples but it still holds. it means we can make academic lessons much more testing and not have to dumb everything down quite so much. I looked at a Physics paper from 2010 (admittedly a Foundation paper) and it was frankly laughable. I showed it to a bright (but not THAT bright) Y4 pupil and she scored 30 out of 45 marks!

DD1 sat the entrance exam for a private school on Saturday and my mum (a retired maths teacher) was going through some maths with her last week just to check that there weren't any major issues. My mum still does tutoring so she had some Standard Grade and Higher past papers in the house and out of interest she gave DD1 a Foundation Stage Standard Grade paper to do. She got almost full marks (she's 4 years off sitting Sandard Grade) and my mum said she did better than a child she is tutoring who will be sitting the real thing in 3 months time.

YD's 6th form are in the process of building a beauty salon.   Some of the girls on the hair and beauty course are only still Yr 10 and 11 - giving more weight to BFG's thinking that by 14 most kids have learnt all they are going to learn and there is no point making them carry on with academic studies if they are not that way inclined.