Winners and losers

So what do we think of the quality of the kids that the education system churns out these days?
The argument usually goes something like this: if more kids keep on getting ever higher numbers of top grade qualifications, how come they lack the basics when they turn up for work?
It isn't that simple, of course, and I can remember people shaking their heads and saying 'it wasn't like this 20 years ago' for, well, at least 20 years.
Digby Jones, the no-nonsense ex-CBI boss who was roped in by Gordon Brown for a short-lived spell as a trade minister, reckons the education system still has a lot to answer for.
But his beef is not that exam passes are being handed out like McDonald's vouchers but that the system isn't teaching kids competitive instincts.
Chatting to me yesterday, he said: "They are not brought up in a way that winning matters, they are not taught to think for themselves, they are not taught to think outside the box – they even have sports days where there are no winners!"
Now, Lord Jones is a passionate believer in the tax-paying, wealth-creating power of private enterprise, and he bridles when anyone suggests that profit should somehow be regarded as a dirty word.
A few years back he visited a school as CBI chairman, only to be told by a teacher: "If you think I'm going to spend my time in this school developing cannon fodder for businesses you can think again." Diggers swiftly reminded said teacher that his salary was paid from taxes levied on the businesses he so despised.
Now, the days when the relationship between business and education was defined by a drawn dagger are long gone. But it's still nowhere near as joined up as it could be.
The nub of Digby Jones' concern is that there remains a conflict between an education system that might seek to create a level playing field and a business world which is defined by competitive instinct, between a curriculum that leads people to answers and a business world which often has to make it up as it goes along.
Anyone who has been through the interview process at one of the big league universities will know what I'm talking about here. An armful of A-grade exam passes is one thing, but it's meaningless unless it's accompanied by the power to think on your own two feet and build an argument – and the more original that argument is, the better.
Either way, the end result of Lord Jones' concerns is a new initiative at the Samworth Church Academy in Mansfield which will see students take part in a competition meant to throw up new business ideas. There will be winners, there will be losers.
Whatever the result, Lord Jones hopes that both will have learned a lesson about competitive instinct.
If they don't, then he fears the workers of the future won't have the drive, ambition and sheer nous to help the UK economy stay competitive in a fast-changing world.