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I assumed from 16 as they have such a short 'working life' (so to speak) but someone said something that made me wonder.......which is more usual?

It depends on the course- if you study a diploma, you can study it from 16 onwards, but if you study a degree, you can study it from 18 onwards. Schools like MADD offer the diploma, and schools like Bird offer the degree. Hope this helps.

It does depend.

Pure dance or just classical ballet tends to be from 16. Musical theatre can be from 18. Bird offer both the diploma and degree incidentally.

With my cynical head on - I find it quite amusing that the good schools who never offered degrees at all, now throw their hat in with the University of Somewhere, who validate a degree programme based around what the school already did with added in academic content? Surely it can't be the availability of funding that cuts their costs?

At 16 when they finish GCSE which is a very systematic, learn by numbers system nowadays with little scope for school individuality - they don't have the skills they need for the academic components of the degree - so they dance for two years if they go for the vocational route, or they study for two years and then do dance.

The schools who get them at 18 only really care about their dance ability - so it doesn't matter very much if their 16-18 years were spent dancing - often for some from scratch - certainly in contemporary people start with no ability at all. The ones who do A Levels probably spend their spare time at the dance classes they've done since the babe stage. So they sort of get to the sameish (excluding often ballet) level and start the hard, dedicated stuff at 18. The popular schools give them once in their second year, time off for real jobs, if that's possible, so at 21, they're sort of 'done'. The good ones work, the less good ones drift away and so it goes on. Lots of my old college girls are now in their 30s and many have had enough of it. Cruise ship work, and holiday centre work pays terribly, and once the fun wears off, it's easy to get jaded. even those who get into west end shows tend to do their contract and then move to another show because it can become so dull and boring - so over the years my feeling that when parents always suggested dance wasn't a proper job and I put them straight, could actually have been an error.

I wonder what it would look like if these people ten years ago had been tracked, so we could watch how their careers progressed and changed? What I'm positive of is that anyone with less than 100% commitment and skill will vanish at some point. We've possibly, in schools from 14, when many introduced dance - generated a large number of people who enjoy dance but will never be good enough. I'd love to see the prospects for traditional local dance school trained kids against those who have only done it in school. I've a strong suspicion these people (and the similar performing arts people) really were set on the wrong path? Not sure any more.

Interesting

So DD at 16 with (potentially):

BTEC Dance (level 2 I think equivalent to 1 GCSE)
Intermediate foundation Ballet (possibly)
Tap at Grade 5 (possibly)
Jazz at Gold (possibly)
Ballroom & Latin (no idea what level but competing)
3 years at the local CAT (maybe)
Plus 12 GCSEs (hopefully all at C)

Eventual aim:
West End for some years then teaching dance

How does she decide?

She was looking at this http://www.italia-conti.com/#/3-year-pe ... 4563555237 but we really aren't sure & we've been told it's not appropriate.