[Melody Pond]

I agree with everyone else really with more practical life lessons like....

• Housing - Tenancy agreements, mortgages, lease holders, what to look out for in houses (dodgy landloards, contracts, being ripped off, damp, structural damage)
• Jobs - Pensions, contracts, interviews and applications, different options other than university (apprenticeships etc)
• Money - Budgeting, taxes, bank accounts, savings accounts, loans (APR etc), credit cards, insurance (life, contents, house etc)
• Practical skills - DIY (how to change a plug, change a fuse etc), basic first aid, basic sewing skills and clothing repair skills, better sex education with more about relationships.
• Academic skills - referencing: In high school essays didn't have a reference list or in text references so in Uni it took a while just to get the hang of Harvard referencing, finding reliable sources and peer reviewed journals. I lost marks on essays in first year due to referencing and I feel it should be introduced earlier.

We kind of touched on bits of this in school but I don't feel enough was done, for example I did first aid in Health and Social care but you only learnt it if you did that lesson and in textiles we learnt how to use a sewing machine and how to hand sew but it was more about making big fancy dresses when it would have been more useful to learn how to alter the hem on trousers etc.

I also wish we had a wider choice of languages, the only option was French in my school and I wish I could have learnt BSL. I did BSL 101 in college as an enrichment programme but I wish I could have completed the Level One qualification as it is really expensive to do.