10 Life Moments:

Day 6 – Leaving school

I was so ready to leave school, the leaving date could not come sooner; it wasn’t that I hated school or that I didn’t enjoy going but there was something about it I didn’t want in my life anymore and I was ready to leave as soon as I could, which is weird really on two counts.

Firstly, my education was marred with teacher’s strikes and industrial action, so I only went to school a few mornings a week. I travelled by school bus from a city suburb about 8 miles out, into the country and because the teaching staff had withdrawn their support, the kids were all sent home at lunchtime due to the fact that we were unsupervised and by the time I got home, I was meant to be back in class, so we only went to school in the mornings. Also for many months we only went to school for half of the week, one week Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, the next week Tuesday and Thursday morning.

Secondly, after I left school I proceeded to go on to do various further education and went to college and/or university on and off for the next thirteen years.

I think education is really important but I did not have that view when I was younger, possibly due to all the industrial action, I suppose if the teachers didn’t care and the government didn’t care, why should I? It was in the middle of a recession (why do we do this to ourselves again and again??) and unemployment was higher than three million, there were no jobs and school leavers were being told to stay on at school because there wasn’t any work for you if you left. Well except for me that is, I was one of the lucky few; I did some work experience weeks in my last few months at school and I was offered a job, so I decided to leave school and start earning some money.