There is great pressure on school students these days for them to go into higher education – for many, this is an unnecessary and costly exercise that doesn’t suit their needs or family circumstances. Ok, if the student has a burning desire to attend ‘uni’ and take part in the life that was so derided by their own parents or grandparents, that is fine, excellent even. However there are many who are pushed through the system for the sake of it. This is generally because the state education system has been changed over the decades to make school managers obsessed with the thought that the only way to score highly on the national league tables is to get as many of their students into uni as physically possible. I have absolute experience of this in my own extended family. A very musical niece was very taken with a group of musicians from a top military band who visited her school – one of them had been a past student. She signed up to get more info and in fact did her year 11 work experience with them. Her plans to omit university or music school and go directly into a military band life was not heralded as a fantastic idea by the school – it was deemed as one who slipped through the net and thus not counting on their headboard tally. She had to still nominate two universities and apply before the exams. She didn’t go into the military in the end but went to university and more or less left music behind. Oh what excitement might her life have offered!