Look what French kids get up to at their A-Level equivalents:
A row has broken out in France over whether 15- and 16-year-olds should be allowed to create transgenic Escherichia coli bacteria in the classroom.
Practical experiments in which students learn how to use plasmids to alter the DNA of the bacteria have been under way for 17 and 18-year-olds in the final year of the scientific baccalaureate at schools across France for the past decade.
When I was in my final year in School, in 1985-6, we used to be able to do biology at this sort of level (not exactly of course, plasmids hadn’t even been discovered then — but approximately the same level of technique.
I bet kids in the final year of A-Levels in the UK nowadays aren’t even allowed near live cultures, let alone being allowed to breed new ones.