According to the UK's LSC, (The Learning and Skills Council), Wags (the wives and girlfriends of famous sports stars, particularly soccer stars) are good roles models for teenage girls. The LSC claim that the Wag image of a vacuous clothes horse and party loving mini-celebrity is inaccurate.

Apparently many of these ladies actually hold a number of GCSEs. GCSEs are the State examinations taken by most pupils around the ages of 15 and 16 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. (Scotland has a separate system). The implication is that these bright, young ladies, having done their school-work, are now in adulthood and are mature, responsible young women who would not be seen dead near a Prada dress or, God-forbid, posing before a bevy of rapacious photographers.

I do not want to get into a discussion about the merits or demerits of Wags and their footballing husbands. I, like many men, will happily set everything aside to watch a football match. I also dislike some of the class innuendo involved in criticism of sports stars and their entourages.

I have to say, though, the LSC gives the game away when they believe they have to resort to statements like this in order to try and motivate teenage girls to take study, and consequently their lives, seriously. Despite their GCSEs, the Wags' only validity as a motivator is that they focus some teenage girls' escapist fantasies of glamour, fashion, and easy wealth.

If the Wags were never seen in those D&G dresses, never appeared in the pages of glossy magazines showing off their dream homes, and were never caught in the glare of flash leaving an exclusive nightclub with the famous boyfriend, it is unlikely we would know anything of them. They have little to do with Tracy from Billericay, who has four GSCEs and is hoping to find a job in retail, or about how her and her boyfriend are saving for a house, or how hard it is.

Surely the LSC's brief is to encourage and provide further education and training for young people, to convince them of the validity of learning and to take responsibility for their lives. It is not to reinforce our culture's obsession with celebrity.