Our schools don’t prepare young people for life. National service could change that | Simon Jenkins

Rishi Sunak’s reinvention of national service is a desperate, last-minute election gimmick. But that does not make it a bad idea. If there is one phase in education across Britain that is way off course, it is the higher teens. Sixth-form, higher and further education are deeply reactionary, more plagued than ever by introverted academic syllabuses and obsessive testing. For decades it has eluded progressive reform.

Sunak’s idea of a…