I am a 15 year old girl and I have been reading this thread. Some really horrible things have been said about people like me and my friends, and I don't think the person who has said them really knows very much about what is going on in schools in England right now. Maybe they have read certain headlines and think that they know what's really going on, but even a naive little 15 year old like me knows that newspapers write what they think will sell more papers, and you have to be careful what you believe. We are having our cervical cancer jabs next week at my school. We are all 15 and I will be 16 next month. None of my friends is having sex yet and neither am I. I really resent what this Lizzie Cornish has said about all young girls in England having sex when they are not even teenagers or in their early teens and basically being slags. Do you think that we are not clever enough to be able to make responsible choices? It seems that you think we can't make these choices because we are at schools which are abusing us, and make us want to jump off roofs. I am really really sorry to disappoint you, but we are fine. Yes, school does suck in certain ways because everyone has subjects they don't like and teachers who you don't get on with, and groups of girls who can be bitches (I am at a girl's school, by the way). But isn't that just life? If I didn't go to school I wouldn't see my friends every day. I probably wouldn't even have most of my friends because we all live in different villages in a rural area, and school is what brought us together in the first place. None of us is going crazy because of exams, and we are in our GCSE year. Most of my friends and I are doing 12 or 13 GCSEs, and we are getting mostly As. Yes, our school makes us work hard, but it's a good school, and we still do babysitting, or have weekend jobs, and still have plenty of time to do other things as well. I just got back from waitressing Sunday lunch at the pub in my village. This weekend I also did all my homework, and some of us slept over at our friend's house, and then we went to Sheep Fair yesterday. If I was being driven crazy with the pressure of my exams, would I have time for all of that? My friends and I also go to folk festivals, even though they are not folkies, because I have brought four different friends to folk festivals in the last two years and they love it. So we are not going into town at night and getting off our faces on alcopops or whatever you said. We are going to festivals and ceilidhs!

I also think what you have said about working mothers is rubbish. My mum works, and she is my best friend. She has made loads of sacrifices for me. We moved house so I could go to the school where I am now. Now she works from home, but even if she couldn't do that I would know how lucky I am because I can talk to her about anything. I have friends whose mums stay at home all day, and it doesn't mean they get on better. She is partly paying for me to go to Japan on exchange next year with my school because she thought it would be a good opportunity. Before you start telling me how spoilt I am, I have to earn 1/3 of the money myself. She could not give me these opportunities if she didn't work.

I am sorry if anybody feels so traumatised by school that they feel they can't stay there and I am sure home schooling is fine for those people. But please do not tar the rest of us as knife carrying psychos who are all on the point of mental breakdown, who have to spend every night getting drunk to blot out the pain, because our lives are just not like that. We are perfectly fine. But thanks so much for your concern. :)