Daily roundup: College education, childhood cancer, and Youth Zones

Tens of thousands of young adults are in "dead-end" college courses that fail to lead to employment, while half a million more with low-level qualifications are not in work, a report by the IPPR think tank has claimed. The Guardian reports that as many as 50,000 people aged 16 to 18 would be better off in apprenticeships or other forms of training, according to the IPPR. Instead, they are likely to remain out of education, employment or training by the age of 19.

The number of children surviving cancer for five years or more has risen from 79 per cent to 82 per cent in the last decade, according to Cancer Research UK. The charity says the increase in survival rates is largely a result of health professionals tackling the disease with a combination of different chemotherapy drugs.

The Queen’s Trust and the St James’s Place Foundation have donated £2m to support the development of Youth Zones in Wolverhampton and the Wirral. Youth Zones are centres where deprived young people under 21-years-old can access a range of services, including sports and music. Both centres are due to open towards the end of 2015.??

Barking and Dagenham Council has been awarded £100,000 to help young people not in education, employment or training to improve their chances of gaining employment. The funding, awarded by the City Bridge Trust, will help young people aged between 18- to 24-years-old access training courses, job clubs, apprenticeship schemes and mentoring programmes. The council is delivering the training in partnership with charity East Potential.

Prevention of young suicide charity Papyrus has called on Google and Microsoft to use technology for tackling child pornography on the internet to also block access to websites promoting, advocating and assisting suicide. Martyn Piper, vice chairman of Papyrus and its lead on internet safety, said: “These sites can and do lead directly to the deaths of vulnerable young people and must be treated with at least the same urgency as the child abuse sites. We have always contended that technology could be used to block access to harmful sites without preventing access to online help for those contemplating suicide.”

And finally, Cornwall Council is spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on taxi services for children who fail to get a place at their nearest school. The West Briton reports that Cornwall Council spent more than £420,000 on transporting 130 children who were refused admission to their closest schools in the last academic year.