Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a £2bn Kickstart jobs scheme in July 2020 as a response to the looming youth unemployment crisis emerging from the COVID-19 global pandemic and as a corrective to undergird the UK industrial strategy. This scheme, alongside the earlier Future Jobs Fund, have origins in much older labour market interventions – The Youth Training Scheme (YTS).

While positioned as relatively short-time labour market interventions the long-term impacts of participating in such schemes is not fully understood. While Kickstart sounds promising who can be really sure what the long-term benefit will be? Therefore, it is reasonable to ask two questions i) what policy/ practice lessons can be learned from the earlier variants; and ii) what were the long-term impacts of participating in YTS?

This online event will be hosted by researchers from the department of Media, Communication and Sociology at the University of Leicester and will attempt to explore these two questions. The event is running as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science.

Drawing from our previous research on the long-term impacts of participating in Youth Training Schemes (1980-2015), funded by the British Academy, we will discuss key findings in light of this ever-evolving context, including the position that YTS holds in the popular imagination.

The programme contains an overview of the original research, including complementary studies from the University of Leicester exploring youth skills. We will consider the value of 'looking back' to YTS in order to look ahead, as well as YTS experiences, thoughts and testimonies from those who did a YTS.

This is a half-day online event consisting of pre-recorded video materials plus a live segment. Appropriate links will be sent out to those who sign-up with confirmation of times.

Date & Time: November 15th 2021 (time will be confirmed)

Image Credit: John Sturrock

Registrations are closed

Youth Opportunities? Long-term impacts of youth training and YTS(1960-2020)