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Government approaches to young people and literacy
The Secondary National Strategy
and Excellence in Cities
are already in place in secondary schools in England to address
underachievement, while the proposed 14-19
curriculum is intended to provide more varied learning
opportunities for those most likely to be disaffected by creating
stronger links between schools, further education colleges
and employers. The promotion of full-service extended
schools - those that open beyond school hours to provide
breakfast clubs, after school clubs as well as health and
social care support services on site - will provide more opportunities
for schools to improve their home and community links, including
family learning.
From a community perspective, the
work of the youth service
and Connexions,
New Deal for Communities and the Positive
Activities for Young People initiative - which focuses
more specifically on young people at risk - provide additional
avenues, and expertise, for addressing disaffection and poor
literacy skills.
Apprenticeships, developed from trade apprenticeships, are
part of the Government's approach to provide better opportunities
for vocational learning at level 2 and above for 16 year olds,
leading to a national qualification. As in traditional apprenticeships,
young people are paid and develop their skills on the job
while they learn. The Entry
to Employment programme provides a progression route for
young people not in education, employment or training who
need basic skills or life skills support.
Links to more information below
The Green Paper, Every
Child Matters, aims to maximise the opportunities
open to children and young people to improve their life chances
and fulfil their potential. The proposed identification and
tracking procedure provides an opportunity to identify too
the basic skills levels of children and young people at risk
and the adoption of imaginative school and community literacy
approaches as part of the care package.
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Links
For information on Apprenticeships visit www.direct.gov.uk/EducationAndLearning
for an overview, or
www.apprenticeships.org.uk for further details.
Smashing down the barriers between services working with young
people will be a priority in the Government's green paper
on youth, due in autumn 2004. Youth minister Margaret Hodge
said the green paper, announced in the Government's five-year
education plan in July, will examine how existing services
can work more closely.
"There are too many silos," Hodge said. "Think
of how often young people are assessed. They get assessed
by drug action teams, by youth offending teams, by Connexions.
It's crazy." The green paper will define the policies
necessary to realise the "integrated youth offer"
that the Government proposed in its education plan, Five
Year Strategy for Children and Learners.
The "offer" aims to provide young people with more
out-of-school activities, advice and chances to volunteer.
It will draw on the experience of Connexions. Hodge said the
scope of the green paper was far large than after-school activities,
adding that the Tomlinson report on 14-19 education would
also feed into the policy document.
(Young People Now, 14 July 2004)
Young people who run away from home are being
targeted by the Government to become students. Some may be
saved from homelessness, drug abuse and prison by a place
in further education, according to the Social Exclusion Unit
(SEU).
The Unit's report, Young Runaways, looks at
what can be done about this hitherto neglected problem. Improving
their access to further education (alongside support with
housing and money) will be crucial in helping runaways aged
over 16, according to the unit. That's where Connexions, the
Government's new careers-advice service for 13 to 19-year-olds,
comes in. The organisation has been set up - one for each
Learning and Skills Council area, and 46 out of 47 regions
were up and running by February 2003 with the remaining one,
Northumberland, due to be launched in April 2003.
The Coventry and Warwickshire Connexions service
has put in place an arrangement whereby the police refer runaways
to a Connexions personal adviser. The SEU's report recommends
that this scheme be rolled out across all Connexions services.
(Independent, 6 February 2003)
The Government is proposing a radical shake-up of the youth
service because of concerns that it is providing low-quality
support. There is an enormous range in the amounts spent by
authorities on youth services. The money is not ring-fenced
and the authorities decide how much they want to spend.
The Government is to increase the number of inspections
by the Office for Standards in Education and introduce a more
robust follow-up system. Of the most recent 29 inspections,
Ofsted considered nine youth services to be good or very good,
nine satisfactory, and 11 to be unsatisfactory or poor. But
only nine of the 150 youth services offered by authorities
are inspected each year.
(TES 6 April , 2001)
Young offenders held in custody are to undergo parenting
classes to prevent them from fathering a new generation of
criminals, under proposals in the criminal justice white paper
announced in July 2002.
The introduction of parenting classes to the 3,000 teenagers
held in secure facilities, to "break the cycle of inter-generational
criminality", marks the extension of a programme which has
so far only been targeted at the parents of difficult youngsters,
but with encouraging results.
The white paper included the biggest overhaul for more than
30 years of the way the police, the courts and the prisons
work. It will include the creation of a national criminal
justice board reporting to a cabinet committee to oversee
delivery.
(Guardian, 17 July 2002)
Wales is taking a different route than that
chosen in England by building on its existing youth service.
The National Assembly has voted unanimously for a new statutory
entitlement to youth support services and the creation of
3000 new youth workers.
Wales is set to join Scotland and Northern
Ireland in having a statutory duty to provide services for
young people. A think tank was set up to develop a system
of youth support for Wales. Young people's groups across Wales
were consulted and the ensuing report was called Extending
Entitlement. Underlying this report was the principle that
all young people in Wales should be entitled to quality, accessible
support services.
This means improving the quality of existing
services and making them more responsive to young people and
filling gaps in existing youth services to make them available
to all.
(TES, 2 February 2001)
The government is to tackle disaffection
among young people by investing £60 million in 500 community
projects in a scheme called the Neighbouring Support Fund.
The money is to be targeted, over the next
three years, at the 40 most deprived authorities in England,
with a low take-up of post-16 learning.
(TES, 1 October 1999)
In 1998 the Government introduced one single
school leaving date - the last Friday in June
- for year 11 students in England wishing to leave school.
Young people are not able to leave school prior to that date
even if they are already 16. The Government intends that the
change in the law will help more young people get GCSEs and
other qualifications before they leave school.
One side effect of the pressure on secondary
schools caused by the league tables was to encourage them
to persuade year-11 pupils who looked as if they were going
to do very badly in their exams, or fail to turn up at all,
to leave school by the end of December. This meant that they
were off roll by the time of the January roll call and therefore
did not count against the school when the league-table positions
were worked out since these calculations are based on the
exam results of pupils on roll in January.
The Government is concerned about the significant
number of pupils leaving school without any qualifications.
In 1997 this accounted for one in seven 16 year olds.
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