If you were the schools minister, what would you do?

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Keep the leaving age at 18 but change the starting age to match other countries like Finland's. Where they don't start pre-primary until age 6.

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Push for the government to pay at least 4% instead of a maximum of 3% (and expecting the schools to cover the other 3.5 out of budgets), of the agreed 6.5% pay rise to teachers from September this year. And also push to increase funding to rural and special needs schools to ease the budget issues that might have resulted.

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For the first year of school up until they graduate I would have one compulsory lesson a week about nature and the environment. For pre-primary this would be recommended to consist of actually taking the children outside and showing and explaining to them the basics. Such as the names of plants, animals and trees. What the difference between a pond and a lake is etc. While doing outdoor activities. I would do this by trying to work with the UK Scouts and trying my best to provide what would be needed for them to work with most schools on this. As well as open up more chances for children to join something like the Scouts that might otherwise not be able to.

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For primary much the same as the above though towards the last few years a few of the lessons being around documentaries about environmental issues in other countries, some topics you would typically find in Geography lessons (such as erosion, tectonic plates, migration etc). For GCSE's instead of having to choose either History or Geography like I did. It would instead be a choice between Geography and the new natural history GCSE. Which I think is supposed to becoming in 2025.

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I would get all secondary schools involved and provide the option for students to take part in the Duke of Edenborough award. I would also have it explained to students in the second year of secondary (around a year before the are old enough to start taking part) about it and what it is.

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The new optional choice to be paired with History would be Religious studies. Meaning all students would end up either doing Geography or Natural History and either History and Religious studies.

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Nutrition and cooking would be compulsory for the same reasons @jonathanemptage already gave as I agree with this.