Yes I’m quite aware of the school leaving rules, sp. I used the phrase I did for brevity. The fact remains that until the change a person could leave school at 16 and roam the streets or get a job as a fish guttert 16. Now he cannot (unless the fish factory offers a recognised traineeship or an apprenticeship in fish gutting which is most unlikely since it takes less than five minutes to teach someone how to gut a fish).
Some cynics may say that this is just a ploy to keep such people off the unemployment register. However, that is another argument. It seems a young person is now deemed insufficiently well equipped to work as a fish gutter until he is 18 and I would suggest he needs a year or two as a working adult before being given the opportunity to decide on who he would like to represent him.