KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday rejected "nanny state" criticisms over a major policy shift that sets a new "education and training age" saying it was time New Zealand got into the 21st century.
The old notion of a leaving age for compulsory schooling will be replaced by an education and training age and raised from 16 to 18, meaning students will need to be at school or in recognised training or education until 18.
And schools will be required to develop by 2011 youth apprenticeship options for its students without an academic bent, in a bid to keep them hooked into the education system.
National education spokeswoman attacked the policy as "draconian" and said it smacked of "the state knows best".
National leader John Key said it was "impractical".
But Helen Clark said without better training and skills, New Zealand could not hope to stay a First World country.
"We are not living in the 50s, or 60s or 70s or 80s," Helen Clark told the Herald after her policy announcement yesterday in Waitakere. "We are living in the 21st century.
"Around half our workforce out there now doesn't have the skills it needs to function in a knowledge economy," she said.
Around 40 per cent of school students leave school without at least an NCEA level two qualification.
"If we are going to put up with generations leaving - 40 per cent not even achieving the equivalent of sixth form certificate - we can't expect to be a First World nation. We will simply not be skilled and educated enough," she said on Radio New Zealand.
Helen Clark said she wanted to develop the pride in education evident in the US at high school graduations.
She saw a different role for schools.
"It liberates them to be very creative in the relationships they have got with industry and community in devising ways of keeping young people in the system, attached to the system, who are not necessarily so academic but have the potential to do very very constructive things."
Helen Clark also suggested engaging disaffected youth in better ways at school could help lower youth crime.
"Less failure in education can contribute to even lower benefit numbers and lower crime rates."
She also linked rising youth violence to the spending cuts of Jim Bolger's Government in the early 1990s.
"New Zealand is still paying the price of past years of economic failure and harsh social policy. Today's violent young criminals are the children of the 'Mother of All Budgets' in 1991.
"A magic wand can't wave that away - but by giving everyone a chance to succeed and supporting the economy's potential to grow, we can, over time, make a big difference."
- additional reporting NZPA
