Kashmir Purewal is an association DCP, former Nottinghamshire Area DCP and an active Conservative member.
Something peculiar has happened in English education. We have spent years arguing about curriculum rigor, standards, and discipline, yet we have quietly allowed one of the most formative influences on young people to drift out of the system altogether, real contact with work.
This did not occur through hostility to employment or disdain for effort. On the contrary, it emerged from well-intentioned attempts to improve academic focus and give schools greater flexibility. But good intentions do not justify bad outcomes. Today, many pupils leave school impressively qualified and curiously unprepared, yet unsure how effort translates into opportunity.
Those who have spent time across schools, universities, and businesses recognise the pattern instantly. Young people are bright, capable, and motivated.
The deficit is not aspiration but of context.
Ask a teenager what they want to be, and you will often hear ambitions shaped by the expanding role of social media, raising questions about its influence on youth decision-making and the implications for education and public policy.
Until recently, most pupils encountered workplace experience before their GCSEs were
complete. The arrangements were uneven and sometimes uninspiring, but they existed. When compulsory work experience was removed in 2012; the assumption was that schools would innovate and replace it with something better.
In practice, many quietly retreated. What ceased to be required, gradually ceased to be prioritised.
The consequences were predictable. Access to work exposure became a matter of social capital rather than educational entitlement. Children of professionals continued to find placements through family networks, others were left guessing. An education system that prides itself on fairness inadvertently made one of the most important aspects of preparation dependent on who your parents happened to know.
This matters, because adolescence is precisely the moment when aspiration needs anchoring.
Conservatives have always understood that ambition without responsibility is fragile, and choice without consequence is hollow. Yet we now expect young people to make irrevocable decisions at 16, between academic routes, vocational pathways, or employment without having seen daily working life at first hand.
That is not freedom of choice, on the contrary lack of it.
The problem does not dissolve with time. Universities increasingly receive students who can write fluently and analyse confidently, but who have never been accountable beyond the classroom.
Workplace norms such as communication, punctuality, resilience, responding to criticism cause unnecessary friction not because young people are unwilling, but because they are unfamiliar.
None of this should surprise us. Character have always been shaped by practice rather than proclamation. Responsibility is not absorbed by osmosis; it is learned when something real depends on your actions.
Work when properly structured, remains one of the most effective teachers of that lesson.
Employers also see the consequences clearly. The difficulty is rarely academic ability. Young recruits are curious and capable. The challenge lies in bridging the gap between education and expectation.
When that gap is too wide, training costs rise, staff churn increases, and frustration sets in on both sides. Some young people disengage not out of laziness, but because work feels like a foreign country whose language they were never taught.
Re-introducing structured exposure to work during the final year of compulsory education would be quietly a radical act. Not a nostalgic return to the tea-making placements of the past, but a purposeful, modern arrangement: short, supervised blocks with clear objectives, integrated into learning rather than bolted on after hours.
The aim is not premature specialisation or vocational sorting, but orientation helping young people understand what work and effort looks like beyond the classroom.
This is far from undermining academic ambition; such exposure strengthens it. Pupils return to lessons with sharper questions and a clearer sense of relevance. Subjects acquire purpose when their application is visible and abstract learning becomes preparation rather than performance.
Choice gains substance.
There are predictable objections about burdening schools or employers with bureaucracy. But this misses the conservative instinct behind the case. The goal is not central micromanagement but partnership: schools setting expectations, employers contributing experience, and the state limiting itself to framework and safeguard.
Employer tax incentives, rather than regulatory compulsion, should be used as a policy lever to engage employers, particularly small firms for whom passing on skills is often a pleasure but rarely a priority amid daily pressures.
Properly designed, workplace experience would simplify rather than complicate what exists now. Today’s careers provision is a patchwork of talks, initiatives, and short encounters that are well-meaning but disconnected. Anchoring these around real workplace experience would give coherence where currently there is clutter.
Understandably, safeguarding concerns are legitimate, but manageable. Employers already operate within established legal frameworks. Placements can be supervised, risk-assessed, and adapted.
Pupils with additional needs can be supported. None of this is novel. What has been missing is the will to treat work as integral rather than incidental. At modest cost, the returns would be substantially increasing better post-16 decisions, lower drop-out rates and smoother transitions into work, training, apprenticeships, or further study. It would mean employers encounter young people for whom work is demanding but not alien, most importantly, a generation growing up with a clearer understanding that progress follows effort.
Re-embedding work into schooling would restore an older and wiser educational truth. That education exists not merely to transmit knowledge, but to prepare individuals for contribution. A system that prizes examination success, while withholding early contact with work, risks turning aspiration into fantasy and responsibility into abstraction.
We rightly celebrate academic excellence. But we should also remember why it matters. Education does not exist to insulate young people from the world, but to equip them to enter it with confidence. Allowing work to fade from schooling was an accident, not a principle.
Putting it back carefully, fairly, and with conviction would signal that we still believe in effort and the dignity of earning one’s way.
Something peculiar has happened in English education. We have spent years arguing about curriculum rigor, standards, and discipline, yet we have quietly allowed one of the most formative influences on young people to drift out of the system altogether, real contact with work.
This did not occur through hostility to employment or disdain for effort. On the contrary, it emerged from well-intentioned attempts to improve academic focus and give schools greater flexibility. But good intentions do not justify bad outcomes. Today, many pupils leave school impressively qualified and curiously unprepared, yet unsure how effort translates into opportunity.
Those who have spent time across schools, universities, and businesses recognise the pattern instantly. Young people are bright, capable, and motivated.
The deficit is not aspiration but of context.
Ask a teenager what they want to be, and you will often hear ambitions shaped by the expanding role of social media, raising questions about its influence on youth decision-making and the implications for education and public policy.
Until recently, most pupils encountered workplace experience before their GCSEs were
complete. The arrangements were uneven and sometimes uninspiring, but they existed. When compulsory work experience was removed in 2012; the assumption was that schools would innovate and replace it with something better.
In practice, many quietly retreated. What ceased to be required, gradually ceased to be prioritised.
The consequences were predictable. Access to work exposure became a matter of social capital rather than educational entitlement. Children of professionals continued to find placements through family networks, others were left guessing. An education system that prides itself on fairness inadvertently made one of the most important aspects of preparation dependent on who your parents happened to know.
This matters, because adolescence is precisely the moment when aspiration needs anchoring.
Conservatives have always understood that ambition without responsibility is fragile, and choice without consequence is hollow. Yet we now expect young people to make irrevocable decisions at 16, between academic routes, vocational pathways, or employment without having seen daily working life at first hand.
That is not freedom of choice, on the contrary lack of it.
The problem does not dissolve with time. Universities increasingly receive students who can write fluently and analyse confidently, but who have never been accountable beyond the classroom.
Workplace norms such as communication, punctuality, resilience, responding to criticism cause unnecessary friction not because young people are unwilling, but because they are unfamiliar.
None of this should surprise us. Character have always been shaped by practice rather than proclamation. Responsibility is not absorbed by osmosis; it is learned when something real depends on your actions.
Work when properly structured, remains one of the most effective teachers of that lesson.
Employers also see the consequences clearly. The difficulty is rarely academic ability. Young recruits are curious and capable. The challenge lies in bridging the gap between education and expectation.
When that gap is too wide, training costs rise, staff churn increases, and frustration sets in on both sides. Some young people disengage not out of laziness, but because work feels like a foreign country whose language they were never taught.
Re-introducing structured exposure to work during the final year of compulsory education would be quietly a radical act. Not a nostalgic return to the tea-making placements of the past, but a purposeful, modern arrangement: short, supervised blocks with clear objectives, integrated into learning rather than bolted on after hours.
The aim is not premature specialisation or vocational sorting, but orientation helping young people understand what work and effort looks like beyond the classroom.
This is far from undermining academic ambition; such exposure strengthens it. Pupils return to lessons with sharper questions and a clearer sense of relevance. Subjects acquire purpose when their application is visible and abstract learning becomes preparation rather than performance.
Choice gains substance.
There are predictable objections about burdening schools or employers with bureaucracy. But this misses the conservative instinct behind the case. The goal is not central micromanagement but partnership: schools setting expectations, employers contributing experience, and the state limiting itself to framework and safeguard.
Employer tax incentives, rather than regulatory compulsion, should be used as a policy lever to engage employers, particularly small firms for whom passing on skills is often a pleasure but rarely a priority amid daily pressures.
Properly designed, workplace experience would simplify rather than complicate what exists now. Today’s careers provision is a patchwork of talks, initiatives, and short encounters that are well-meaning but disconnected. Anchoring these around real workplace experience would give coherence where currently there is clutter.
Understandably, safeguarding concerns are legitimate, but manageable. Employers already operate within established legal frameworks. Placements can be supervised, risk-assessed, and adapted.
Pupils with additional needs can be supported. None of this is novel. What has been missing is the will to treat work as integral rather than incidental. At modest cost, the returns would be substantially increasing better post-16 decisions, lower drop-out rates and smoother transitions into work, training, apprenticeships, or further study. It would mean employers encounter young people for whom work is demanding but not alien, most importantly, a generation growing up with a clearer understanding that progress follows effort.
Re-embedding work into schooling would restore an older and wiser educational truth. That education exists not merely to transmit knowledge, but to prepare individuals for contribution. A system that prizes examination success, while withholding early contact with work, risks turning aspiration into fantasy and responsibility into abstraction.
We rightly celebrate academic excellence. But we should also remember why it matters. Education does not exist to insulate young people from the world, but to equip them to enter it with confidence. Allowing work to fade from schooling was an accident, not a principle.
Putting it back carefully, fairly, and with conviction would signal that we still believe in effort and the dignity of earning one’s way.