School plans centre to house its homeless pupils

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/01/school-plans-house-homeless-pupils

This article makes me really ponder (That word is funny, say it out loud: ponder) our education system here.  I am very confused because if any students here were homeless, I am quite certain they would not end up going to school.  But these students in Britain go to school for four months and someone finally finds out that they are homeless.  Four months of sleeping on a hard bench in a park when it is either really cold or really hot and working on homework.

And then the startling fact of 100% of this school's year 13 pupils go on to higher education, even though around half of them are entitled to free school meals.  What is this school doing that we need to do in the United States? Because clearly they are doing something that is encouraging 100% of their students to go to higher education.

I respect this school because they are taking a holistic approach to education.  They believe (And I do as well) that certain needs must be met in order for the student to learn.  One of those is somewhere to lay your head at night and feel safe.  The creation of this house for homeless students would help with that, it would also help with the meals as well, I would assume.  It says in this article that a student was not comfortable in her hostel kitchen, and then one of her pans was stolen, so she had to have microwaved food for a few months.

This gets me excited that in other places, education is focusing on the student so much.  Notice in this article that they are not talking at all about competition with other schools or other countries.  I think that that is the worst thing that we, as the United States can do, to turn education into a competition.  The minute we do that is the time where we lose the purpose of education.  Which is to foster wholesome human beings.  How can we create compassionate human beings when we are bombarding them with "You are not doing as well as them, you need to do better or else the US is screwed because we are behind many countries on the education list."  That is pointless to do and say.