What is the purpose of the sixth, and final, year of secondary education? To round off schooling, of course, and equip young people with the qualifications they need for employment and further or higher education. But anyone whose answer was based solely on observing recent shenanigans in and around secondary schools might reasonably conclude that the purpose was to indulge the high-

spirited japes of sixth-year students departing on study leave ahead of the Higher and CSYS examinations (which began this week). There is a long tradition of final-year students staging valedictory stunts to get up the noses of, and take revenge on, their teachers. The start of study leave is the ideal time for such stunts, since these students will return to school thereafter only to sit exams. Using the family car to prevent staff from parking in the school is a popular wheeze which particularly gets up the pedagogical nose when the blocking vehicle is the student's own and is better than the teacher's.

Direct action can also be taken against staff and there is nothing wrong with these high-jinks as long as they are not disproportionate, do not cause genuine offence, and are neither harmful nor humiliating. Certainly, we wish to be neither hypocritically high-handed nor po-faced about the tradition. But it does raise a serious question about whether the energy of older teenagers is properly directed in their ultimate school year. The fewer subjects most need to take, the different learning demands of the CSYS, and their relative maturity, mean they enjoy a latitude unavailable further down the school. But that latitude all too frequently leads to lassitude among those who need little in the way of further qualifications to get to university (or nothing at all in the case of those with unconditional offers). More worryingly, languor and drift can spill over into the first year of university,

jeopardising the prospects of young people who find it difficult to break out of a corrosive mindset.

The problem has become more acute as more young people stay on for fifth and sixth years and achieve better qualifications. It has been recognised for many years and was, indeed, one of the key concerns which prompted Sir Malcolm Rifkind when he was Secretary of State for Scotland to charge the Howie Committee with the twin tasks of reviewing upper secondary provision and proposing a solution to its many problems. The Higher Still reform has superseded Howie and today's third-year pupils will be the first to embark on the new courses in August next year (adequate resources and teacher union co-operation allowing). A new Advanced Higher for the most able, taken over two years and replacing the CSYS, will be introduced in 2000. Secondary schools currently offer a range of piecemeal options outside the formal curriculum, such as setting up businesses and trading on the Internet, to harness the

undoubted talent and energy of under-occupied sixth-year students. But if all goes to plan the successors to today's japesters will have much more to occupy their minds than ambushing their teachers: a rigorous, challenging Advanced Higher.