Does our education system meet the needs the workplace

^The problem with apprentiships is that most modern apprentiships are a con!

Jobs that were previously entry level jobs at min wage are now filled by apprentiships at less than £4 an hour, who are replaced by another cheap apprentise at the end of the program^

There are hundreds of these advertised on local job sites. Many for the local authority too. Basically pen pushing jobs being turned into an apprenticeship for a young person in order to pay them the least amount of money possible (plus zero NI etc). They openly state that they are only open to 16-17 year olds to maximise the length of slave labour.

On the opposite side of things we were conned into taking an older (genuine) apprentice industrial electrician and have been well and truly ripped off by the system.

Apologies but the first paragraph was a quote from a previous post by notanan .

Just to remind everyone that it is not only nursing students who work for nothing, DD has just completed a 10 weeks teaching placement, full time, unpaid, and still has to pay £9000 a year for tuition fees.

As a retired nurse, I have to say that nursing is also academic. Without research, nurses would still be rubbing pressure areas and overmedicating in many areas. Including Mental Health and Learning Disabilities. There needs to be a balance between hands on experience and learning. But, sadly, now Nurse students will have to pay for their training in England and Scotland it is hard to see how nursing will go forward

It was indeed the lovely Michael Gove, he who despises "experts" and thought he knew so much better than those working in education.

Gerispringer is right to point out the benefits children get from creative subjects, I'd add physical exercise to that list.

Yea, the curriculum needs to be a wide as possible to give children the chance to experience a wide range of subjects and activities.

Soon enough to ‘specialise’ when they choose their options.

The post that caught my eye was
We have had too many go through an academic route into teaching and lecturing with no workplace experience who are developing academic dogma based in impractical and unworkable ideologies.

It's the govt who decides what subjects and content to teach at what stage, and how OFSTED want to see it taught, not the teacher. The Senior Leadership Team in school also often make sweeping statements as to how the lesson should look, regardless of which subject it is, not the teacher, again to appease OFSTED.
The school leaving age is 18, so pupils have to be in school, college or in an apprenticeship. Pupils who have not reached a certain standard in Maths and English must study those subjects beyond 16.
Universities are driven by money, so a course which doesn't attract enough interest is dropped, even though it may be a subject useful to industry. Similarly A level subjects in school without enough pupil interest will also go. Popular subjects (at either level) are often the ones pupils have not studied before. We live in a supply and demand society.
In olden days most grammar school pupils went to uni or some other form of Higher Education. That was about 18-25% of the population depending on where you lived.
Lastly, who would decide which subjects are useful and which are not? The govt would. Looking at the mess that's been created thus far, probably not.