[icebraining]

Reminds me of the dialogue is Yes, Prime Minister:

  - Education in this country is a disaster. We're supposed to prepare children for work.
    Most of the time they're bored stiff.
  - I should've thought that being bored stiff was an excellent preparation for work.
  - The school leaving age was raised to 16, but they're learning less.
  - We didn't raise it so they'd learn more! We raised it to keep teenagers off the job market
    and hold down unemployment figures.

OTOH, would allowing home schooling really solve suicides by schoolchildren? Seems like if a parent is worried enough about their kid's mental health to home school them, they'd do so even if they have to move country (especially nowadays, when you can live and work in different EU countries easily). Isn't it more a matter of the adults around not perceiving the problem?

[AstralStorm]

The dialogue is the unspoken truth. The age limit was actually instated to prevent kids from working damaging factory or repetitive jobs. There are much fewer of those nowadays.