If I may...
Some re-emphasis on real apprenticeships would be very welcome, I'm sure...
Warning from headteachers as parents dig deep to fund boom in private tutors
"...Hundreds of thousands of children - some as young as two - now receive private tuition at a cost of between £7 and £60 an hour. Parents say the extra study gives their children confidence and helps them secure top grades, but headteachers are warning that the tutoring market is beginning to spiral out of control and is "trading on insecurity"..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/apr/26/warning-headteachers-tutoring-boom
Tutoring's downside
"It is worrying that parents are paying for extra tutoring in the hope that their children will reach the required A-level grades for a university course (Poorer parents digging deep to fund boom in private tutoring, 27 April).[i.e. the above link]
Such students, even if successful, are being set up to struggle once they get to university, where class contact time will be minimal and teaching does not focus on passing exams.
University teachers are increasingly seeing a mismatch between our incoming students' perceptions of education and our own.
While we try to develop the skills of independent research, analysis, critique and original thought, they just want to be told the "right" answer (or the one that will get them a first-class mark).
Their confusion is total when this meets with not just a refusal but a suggestion that there might be more than one...
Professor Rosemary Auchmuty
School of law, University of Reading"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/apr/29/tutoring-downside