NCS must deliver beneath all the packaging and politics
Ravi Chandiramani
Monday, September 19, 2011
David Cameron has promoted his government's flagship youth policy the National Citizen Service with great zeal for many months, and indeed while in opposition for some years.
So the findings of this summer's first pilots will be greeted with interest. Thirteen projects representing more than 400 places for young people responded to our snapshot survey, giving the first true insight into the workings of NCS on the ground.
Encouragingly, project managers on the whole say it was well received by the young participants. They also identify plenty of teething troubles, as any pilots should. Chief among these is the fact that one in four young people failed to actually finish the programme, which project chiefs attribute to its current structure and scheduling.
It is, of course, a sample. On learning about our survey, the Cabinet Office contacted providers instructing them not to respond to our investigation because it has itself commissioned an "impartial evaluation".
Heavy-handed or paranoid, you decide.
Our survey also found that 79 per cent of available places were taken up, compared with the government's stated figure of 8,500 out of 11,000 places (77 per cent). This alone suggests that our other findings are unlikely to be wide of the mark.
As we know, NCS is limited to 16-year-olds for a few weeks in the summer. But opportunities for personal and social development should be available year-round and based on young people's changing needs and wishes, not their birth dates. The focus on NCS coincides with deep cuts to existing young people's services and volunteering initiatives, while The Duke of Edinburgh's Award chief executive Peter Westgarth says it is "heartbreaking and frustrating" that it is unable to service the growing demand for its schemes among young people.
However, NCS is a deeply politicised project at the heart of Cameron's big society drive. It is a potential vote winner - pollster YouGov found 77 per cent want it to be compulsory. While other great initiatives wither under the radar, NCS is being packaged and marketed as the way to instil responsibility and self-discipline in our youth - hence the Cabinet Office's jumpiness. Only time will tell whether there is substance beneath the spin.
Ravi Chandiramani, editor, Children & Young People Now
