Britain’s billion-pound scheme for youth

Press, 30 September 1983, Page 17

Britain’s billion-pound scheme for youth

From

DIANA DEKKER

in London

It is possible that the adulation of the crowd at a Liverpool versus Manchester United soccer match in a few years time will be directed at some young man who got his start through Britain’s Youth Training Scheme. Those clubs — along with others like Nottingham Forest, Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Aston Villa — are some of the 4000 British organisations taking part in a scheme which, more slowly than expected, swung into operation in September. The Youth Training Scheme (Y.T.S.) is being organised by the Manpower Services Commission on a grand scale. It aims to have 460,000 young people, mostly 16-year-old school leavers, on oneyear job-training schemes by the end of the year. The cost to the Government has been projected at one billion pounds a year. The Manpower Services Comrion expected thg the bulk of places would Tie taken up

almost immediately. By last week only 125,000 young people had applied and been included. The commissin puts this down to improved job prospects for young people and more youth than expected staying at school. “A Y.T.S. place will be available by Christmas for every unemployed 16-year-old school leaver who wants one. There is no doubt about that,” the Manpower Services Commission chairman, Mr David Young, says. The scheme is intended as a state-sponsored programme of training and work experience to help young people in the transition from school to working life, and to give employers “a better-trained and more highly-motived workforce.”

Contributing employers, whose individual training programmes must be acceptable to the Manpower Services Commission, are not supposed to make any money

out of the scheme. They receive $4250 a trainee as a block grant and $230 towards administrative costs. The grant is payable for trainees who would normally be employed and for any additional unemployed trainees taken on. Firms must agree to take three extra trainees for every two they would normally employ. From the block grant, trainees are paid $57.50 a week. The new scheme has been variously described since it was first mooted.

“The Times,” in an editorial last month, said “it is the latest and biggest attempt by Mrs Thatcher’s Government to rescue a generation of British youth from aimless unemployment.” It added: “Y.T.S. is an anti-riot device keeping 16-year-olds off the unemployment records

and off the streets.”

Mr Bill Keys, one of three Trades Union congress representatives to the commission, has called it “nothing more than a sophisticated and cynical re-run of the old youth opportunities programme.” However, Mr Geoffrey Holland, director of the commission, says that the scheme is “not just there to mop up the unemployed.” “The need for Y.T.S. is beyond dispute,” he says. “In this country 44 per cent of young people go into jobs with no training at all, compared with six per cent in West Germany. The training scheme is the ( larget single step we have taken to redress the balance. “At least four times as many young people will get a good quality training than in recent

years. That training is for all and not just the lucky few.

“About one-third of those on the scheme this year will have contracts of employment with the organisation sponsoring the course they are on. When the days of high unemployment are gone, Y.T.S. will still be with us.

“Having created the target places, the success of Y.T.S. will depend on young people realising its value through finding jobs, continuing training, or making new opportunities for themselves. “Through this scheme, Britain’s young people will have the sort of start that young people in West Germany, North America, and Japan nbw get,” he adds. The start young people can look for in the scheme can come in any one of 12 “occupational families.” These include, broadly, administrative, clerical and office services occupations, agriculture, horticul-/ ture, forestry, and fisheries, craft

and design, installation, maintenance and repair, technical and scientific, manufacturing and" assembling, processing, food preparation and service, sales, community and health services, and transport. The largest number of places being offered through the scheme has come from the Post Office which intends to provide about 4000 places for school leavers over the next few months. This is four times the normal intake and as many as possible will be offered full-time jobs at the end of the programme. Football clubs are, collectively, offering 113 Y.T.S. places. Liverpool Youth Music is to take on 67 trainees to play, repair, and make musical instruments. The Runcorn Training Workshop will take on trainees in horticulture, including bee-keeping, pottery, sewing, woodwork, and metalwork. The Atomic Energy Establishment in Dorset is offering 34 places.