Age of reason

摘要

From October 2006, British employers will be expected not to make decisions about recruitment, training, promotion and dismissal on the basis of age, unless they can justify them objectively. And quite right, too, you may say, especially if you are being "encouraged" to retire early to save your company money, or are hoping to be promoted ahead of older, less able colleagues. But the legislation will have no effect in schools-perhaps the country's most age-ist institutions. In England and Wales, students enter, progress through and exit the school system almost entirely according to the date on their birth certificates. (The Scottish system is slightly more flexible about the age at which children start.)