My teaching background is with students with emotional and behavioural difficulties (BESD now). Currently I am a mentor for notschool.net, an online community of secondary age researchers. I also work for Edge Hill university, assessing Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTA) in secondary schools and for OCR as an ICT GCSE moderator. I am interested in computer gaming as an approach to learning. My soapbox stance at the moment is on the nature of compulsory schooling and the need to rethink that tenet as we build schools for the future. We need "school so compelling that it need not be compulsory" (Sean McDougall at Futurelab conference 2006). What do you think the compulsory school leaving age should be...and why?