So the government is introducing Traineeships int the UK - pre-apprenticeship training, as it were - for those who haven’t managed to get a C Grade in English and math, to help them find a job. And hold it down.
And it's about time, too, taking into account a CBI survey showing that almost two-thirds of employers think many young people lack work-related skills and attitudes.
Some of those employers would still give a young person a chance - or even an apprenticeship - but what about those who flatly refuse to consider taking on somebody under the age of, say, 22? 24? 26, even?
Today's big question (or lat least one of them) is this: would any of those flat refusers even bother to look at the Discussion Paper produced by the Department for Education and the Department for Business Innovation & Skills about those traineeships?
We think they ought to.
The Paper itself is divided into five main sections:
What is the problem we are trying to solve?
What does the evidence tell us about what works?
What does the proposed Traineeship model look like?
How will Traineeships be delivered?
How will we engage employers?
And, perhaps, most importantly, it contains twelve key questions for employers and training providers about what traineeship programmes should look like, both for 16-18-year-olds on study programmes, and for 19-24-year-olds who aren't employed.
The Employability Problem
As for the first section, it's fairly obvious what the problem itself is: employability. Skimming through this part, there are a couple of points that stand out, as in young people who aren't in education, employment or training "are more likely than their peers to go on to have negative outcomes, including unemployment, low pay, poor health and depression".
Looking in more detail at employers' concerns about work-related skills and attitudes, it's said that CVs are poorly written, some people don't turn up for interview, or if they do, they haven’t prepared for them ... or they don't understand the requirements of routine or punctuality.
It's not surprising, then, that when faced with piles of poorly-written CVs, no-shows at interviews and a disregard for punctuality, many employers aren't happy about the idea of taking on young people, in any kind of capacity.
And one gap the government wants to fill with Traineeship is the way young people "move in and out of education and short-term employment ... churning between the two in an attempt to find either a course which offers a real chance of progress, or a permanent job, and finding neither".
All in all, it's a pretty desperate situation out there - for many employers and many, many young jobseekers.
What does the evidence tell us about what works?And what, according to the Paper, does work?
These are the words that leap off the page at us - basically because they're printed in bold: "flexible and personalised" ... "English and maths" ... "workplace experience" and "mentoring".
Which, for all those busy people out there, with no time for reading the rest of the text, basically says it all.
And going into a bit more detail, as far as English and math go, the Paper quotes a report stating that fewer than 50% of students achieve an A*- C GCSE in both subjects by the end of Key Stage 4 ... and just 4% manage it between the ages of 16 and 18.
How this is going to tie in with Education Secretary Michael Gove's plans for his English Baccalaureate examinations taking over from GCSEs, we have yet to see.
Under the heading of "workplace experience", the Paper revisits the employers' concerns we looked at last time, saying that they’re looking for attitudes and behaviours that include reliability, punctuality, communications skills, teamwork and the capacity to present well in both application forms and interviews. And the best work placements, says the Paper, combine real work with a planned programme to develop skills.
Coordination, it continues, between the work placement and delivery of training helps to increase learning and motivation when participants see the relevance of one to the other.
And that makes perfect sense - after all, what's the point of developing a training programme that seems to have nothing to do with the job you're training for? For those who aren't directly involved, it's possible to step back, look at the big picture and see that what a trainee’s being taught in February will tie in with what they're going to do in the workplace in June ... but for the trainee, that's not going to be much in the way of help. In fact, it could be more of a hindrance. If not a downright disincentive.
So one other word that should have appeared in this section really ought to have been "coordination".
At least, we think so.
