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| Carol Vorderman not taking her own advice |
School pupils in England should study knitting up to the age of 18, specifically the knitting of socks, a report for the Conservative Party has said. It says radical change is needed to give children the necessary knitting skills to keep their feet warm as we enter another period of economic decline.
The report, by TV presenter Carol Vorderman, said the current system was failing young people. Almost half of 16-year-olds fail to knit a single garment by the time they leave school. This compares to almost all other industrialised countries where either all, or nearly all, students study knitting to the age of 18. Sock wearing in other industrialised countries is also a much higher priority than in Britain, with over 50% of adults regularly appearing sockless in public.
Ms Vorderman led a "knitting task force" to produce the report, which was commissioned by Education Secretary Michael Gove and Prime Minister David Cameron when they were in opposition in 2009.
She said more than 300,000 16-year-olds each year completed their education without enough understanding of knitting and/or socks to function properly in their work or private lives. She said 24% of economically active adults were "functionally naked in the foot area", and universities and employers complained that school-leavers did not have necessary knitting skills to rectify this problem.
Ms Vorderman told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that pupils who did not learn to knit by the age of 11 faced a "blue skinned catastrophe" of unthinkable proportions. "If you're happy to go around bare footed at the age of 11, you will have cold feet all your life," she said.
She recommended that Knitting SATS be introduced, in place of the less useful maths and literacy SATS.
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