Education Select Committee says good youth work works

We were delighted to be asked to give evidence in person before the Education Select Committee in February and warmly welcome their conclusions just published.

You can read the Committee's conclusions, see what Nick Wilkie and Jas Hothi had to say to the Committee here and download our written evidence to the right .

The Committee came out strongly in support of youth work, noting that whilst young people spend 85% of their time outside school, government spend 55 times more on formal education than they do on youth services.

MPs also suggest local authorities should become strategic commissioners rather than default providers - a position we agree with. 

The Committee also have plenty to say about payment by results and social impact bonds. Like them, we see both potential and hazard in emerging business models. This is why we are delighted to be chairing the Catalyst Consortium's social finance strategy team and working with partners there to help develop a set of common standards for measuring impact. We concur with MPs that this must be simple and inexpensive to administer.

The Committee also concluded that the cost of National Citizenship Service (at £1,182 per person or £700m across the whole 16 year old cohort of 600,000) cannot be justified for a summer programme. We agree that NCS needs to be about much more that the initial intervention. That's why we are delighted to be working with The Challenge to run NCS with and through locally led and trusted organisations - in order to recruit young people who might not put their hand up in school (or be in school) and sustain youth action beyond one summer.