I am passionate about ensuring that young people make the right choice at 18, and have met far too many young people who either dropped out of university or took the wrong course and are not really heading in the right direction for their career.  

I recently wrote on my blog about how research says that it does pay to go to university, but I am tempted to say "they would say that"

I was talking to the mother of a 17 year old who I’ll be working with next week. She’s very keen for her daughter to work through my student programme, and thinks it should have a much greater take up. I said that I’d approached all my local private schools but none were interested I even talking to me.

She’s given me a different perspective on why not - said that the schools want to get as many of their students into university as possible and if I encourage students to think about this, some may decide not to go, and this doesn’t look good on the stats which can reduce the amount parents are prepared to pay.

There was an article relating to this in The Times the other day - schools will be assessed on how many pupils reach higher education but this is not the right move for all - for some they might study for a degree later when they are clear what they want to do, for many they would prefer to start earning some money and not to get a degree, a non graduate job and 20K of debt.