School Isn’t As Important As You Think

The education system is not as good as you might think

It’s over ten years since I left school. In that time I have accomplished a lot, worked in various jobs, lived in numerous countries, it’s hard to comprehend how much I have changed in those ten years.

Leaving school felt like a big deal at the time. At the end of the school year in 2008, I would be leaving behind the only thing I had known for the majority of my life and heading to university.

I remember a talk one of the teachers gave about this step. She was clear that going to university was not as big a step as moving on from the end of high school to sixth form.

At the time I thought this was nonsense, looking back after ten years, I can confirm it was indeed nonsense.

There is no comparison between studying for exams to get into university at the same school for two years and leaving school to move to live by yourself at university for the first time.

The more I look back on my time at school, the more I realise just how much I didn’t learn. Sure, I learnt a lot of facts and figures, but how much of that has been truly useful?

I certainly haven’t needed to use a quadratic equation since I left school, and I spent enough lessons…