Lynn, you're confusing a graduation ceremony with the acquisition of qualifications. Just as in the HP books, kids sit examinations and gain qualifications as a result. In England and Wales, they sit GCSEs at 16 and some will continue to sit A-Levels at 18 (if you
really want to know what those stand for, I can tell you! :rolleyes: ). In Scotland, the school-leaving qualification is Highers. In Ireland, kids sit the Junior Certificate and then most will continue to the Leaving Certificate. In France it's the Baccalaureat. Other countries have their own qualifications.
So, unless a child leaves school at 16 - as they are legally entitled to do in the UK the April after their 16th birthday - before sitting GCSEs they're not 'dropouts' without qualifications.
But, yes, there is a problem with kids leaving school with no qualifications; one big problem for the English/Welsh (not Scottish) labour market is the lower average staying-on rate in full-time education as opposed to kids in other countries.
Edit: Just read Helga's post - she says it so much better than I did.
But the 'day of celebration' is pretty rare - I'd never heard of it before. As she says, the fact that exam results, in the UK and Ireland at any rate, don't appear until August, when kids have already finished school and may even have started their first jobs, makes it difficult to do anything like that. So no cap and gown - in fact, because there's no ceremony like that below university graduate level, that makes the university graduation ceremony all the more special.
Oh, and how do employers make hiring decisions if the results aren't out until August? There's such a thing as mock exams - they're a practice session for the real thing, conducted under the same conditions and marked at the same standard. Employers can ask how a school-leaver performed in the mocks and, of course, will get references from the school.
Wendy
