what we have a right to expect from the system. Fundamentally we have a right to expect that the system will teach our children and young people rather than collapse into a national child sitting service.

Schools should be here to educate. Too often they are being used simply to look after young people during the day with a philosophy that if they learn a little something so much the better.

Young people are entitled to have an education available to them but they are not entitled to credentials if they do not master that education. Too often we keep young people in school only because the law demands that we do. Thus we pass them through a system which gives them a credential for a course which they have not mastered. This is nowhere more evident than in those "graduates'' who can hardly spell, read poorly and have only a slight grasp of maths. With those handicaps they have little future.

Too often they have learned little but we accept their demands for credentials because we know they have not been taught or challenged. If students have difficulty with the standard of education, then that standard is lowered. In any case, teachers look good if their students pass through the system and too often give them grades which are not representative of their ability or their efforts. "Modern education'' demands that their feelings should not be hurt, their future but not their feelings.

The fact that we ask so little of students contributes to their disregard for authority and leads them to believe that they are entitled to a place in the world whether or not they are prepared to take that place. Then we wonder why young people feel cheated when they leave school and find themselves unprepared for the real world.

This breeds young people who are resentful and hostile. They have had their own way in school and their demands have been met but that is not the way of the working world. They were "entitled'' to what they wanted but not taught.

The result is drop outs and wall sitters and people who fall through the cracks.

Pupils will demand whatever they can get and the more they get the more they will demand. Our schools should not be there to meet their demands but to give them the learning to get through a future which is often difficult. Instead it has become correct to give them what they want for instant gratification and comfort and not what they need for the future. Dropping out and sitting on walls is also instant gratification, without effort even if it is without reward.