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Employment Policies for Youth in Britain and the USA*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
Abstract
In both Britain and the USA a young person leaving school with few or no qualifications faces great difficulties in obtaining employment. A number of policies have been developed in both countries to help counter some of the problems to which an increasing proportion of young unemployed gives rise. This article examines some of these policies and their underlying assumptions about the causes of youth unemployment. It attempts to identify the strengths and weaknesses of programmes developed by both the training and education services and to see what relevance the more extensive youth policies in the USA may have for the problems and policies nurtured in Britain.
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References
1 This covers policies within the field of further education, Unified Vocational Preparation (UVP), Youth Opportunity Programmes and Community Industry.
2 The term ‘disadvantaged’ covers the socially deprived young persons who do not finish high school for reasons of social circumstances (family and community deprivations and social prejudices); and the personally deprived young people who do not finish high school for reasons of personal circumstances (mental, physical or psychological disabilities). This definition was used in a report of the Carnegie Council, Giving Youth a Better Chance, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1979.Google Scholar
3 Evidence of changes in the employment structure in Britain show a dramatic change in the manufacturing sector which has affected opportunities for male unskilled labour. In the USA many jobs have moved from urban-centres to the periphery. The areas of acute youth unemployment are the inner urban areas.
4 In Britain, for instance, in July 1980 (Employment Gazette, July 1980, 36Google Scholar) the unemployment rate in the south east was 3.8 per cent as against an unemployment rate of 9.2 per cent in the north. In the USA in 1977 the unemployment rate for whites in the 20–24-year age bracket was 10 per cent while the rate for non-whites was 20 per cent.
5 See John Hughes, discussion on the problems of ‘closed structures’ within the education world, ‘Education, work and unemployment in the 1980s’, Educational Research (November 1979)Google Scholar; also Holland, G., ‘More than Half our Future: 16–19-year-olds in employment’, Oxford Review of Education, 5: 2 (1979), 147–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Holland, op. cit.
7 Bazalgette, J., School Life and Work Life, The Grubb Institute, London, 1978, p. 122Google Scholar; Marris, P. and Rein, M., Dilemmas of Social Reform, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972, pp. 82–3.Google Scholar
8 See Jones, A., ‘Why not untangle the bouquet of barbed wire?’, The Times Educational Supplement, 1.8.80, p. 4Google Scholar; Carnegie Council, Giving Youth a Better Chance, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, 1979.Google Scholar
9 See Ethnic Minorities and the Special Programmes for the unemployed, MSC/CRE, London, 1979Google Scholar; Opportunities for girls and women in the MSC Special Pragrammes for the Unemployed, MSC, London, 1979Google Scholar; and The Job Creation Programme, Seventh Report for the Expenditure Committee, Session 1976–1977Google Scholar, Vol. II, para 13, 394 – II, HMSO, London, 1977.
10 A ‘prime sponsor’ can be either a city, a state or a combination of different cities, counties etc. The city of Los Angeles, for instance, is one sponsor. The minimum qualification for a prime sponsor is a population of at least 100,000.
11 The Job Creation Programme, op. cit. p. xxxiv.
12 For a fuller discussion of these issues see Van Horn, Carl E., ‘Implementing CETA’, Policy Analysis, 4:2 (Spring 1978), 159–83.Google Scholar
13 Review of the Frst Year of Special Programmes, Manpower Services Commission, HMSO, London, 1979Google Scholar, paras 1–64 and 103–4.
14 With present unemployment so high this may be less true.
15 See Local Authority Arrangements for the School Curriculum, DES and Welsh Office, HMSO, London, November 1979.Google Scholar
16 See A Basis for Choice, Further Education Curriculum Review and Development Unit, DES, London, June 1979.Google Scholar
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21 A Better Start in Working Life, presented by the Secretaries of State for Employment, Education and Science, Department of Industry and for Scotland and Wales, DES/joint publications, London, April 1979, p. 1.
22 An article by Ball, Colin (‘Expansion is not enough’, Times Educational Supplement, 17.10.800)Google Scholar pointed out that in January 1980 the total numbers of young unemployed had risen to 216,000 although only 160,000 of these were registered as unemployed because the rest were on YOP programmes.
23 Fowler, Gerald, ‘The Accountability of Ministers’ in Lello, J. and Locke, W. (eds), Accountability in Education, Warde Locke Educational, London, 1979Google Scholar, hinted at competition for funds between MSC and DES. The MSC, in the 1970s, received substantial government resources for its programmes while ‘the education budget was not…similarly favoured. Thus MSC's Youth Opportunities Programme, which offered to all young people admitted to the programme an allowance of £19.50 a week may have helped the Secretary of State to secure Cabinet agreement to her announcement in summer 1978 that by the beginning of the 1979–80 educational year a universal means-tested system of allowances for 16–18-year-olds who remained in full-time education was to be introduced‘, p. 24.
24 A number of experimental projects have been introduced at state level. In California, for example, the State Youth Employment Act has provided new funds to support job training programmes operated jointly by private employers and community colleges.
25 Halsey, A. H., Heath, A. F. and Ridge, J. M., Origins and Destinations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980.Google Scholar
26 The Youth Services Forum no longer receives government financial support.
27 Hargrove, E. C. and Dean, G., ‘The Case of CETA’, Policy Analysis 6:2 (Spring 1980), 127–49.Google Scholar
28 Ewan, J., ‘MSC: best hope for the jobless’, Times Educational Supplement, 6 07 1980, p. 4.Google Scholar
29 The relationship between family background and type of school attended, school achievement levels and subsequent types of employment has been a favourite subject for sociologists of education in Britain. Douglas, J. W. B., The Home and the School, MacGibbon and Kee, Manchester, 1964Google Scholar; Bernstein, B., ‘A Socio-Linguistic Approach to Social Learning’, in Gould, J. (ed.), Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1965Google Scholar; Jackson, B. and Marsden, D., Education and the Working Class, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1962Google Scholar. Even in the USA conflict theorists such as Bowles, and Gintis, (Schooling in Capitalist America, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1976)Google Scholar, have argued that cognitive factors play but a minor role in the allocation of individuals to positions in the class structure.
30 People and their families, Central Policy Review Staff, HMSO, London, 1980, p. 45.Google Scholar
31 For a fuller discussion of the problems of ethnic minorities within the School system in the USA see Ogbu, J., Minority Education and Caste, Academic Press, New York, 1978Google Scholar. In Britain a study of young people in Coventry shows how school structures succeed in making many children totally out of tune with school life. The lack of communication – between parents, and employers of young people is also brought out clearly. Bazalgette, J., School Life and Work Life, Hutchinson Educational Press, London, 1978Google Scholar. Bruce Fuller in an unpublished article (‘A Third Generation of Youth Programmes’, Stanford School of Education, 1979) also discussed more fully alternative perspectives on the youth employment problem in the USA.
32 Mandelson, P., ‘An Open Letter to the Minister of Youth’, The Guardian, 2.9.80, p. 2.Google Scholar
33 Ogbu, op. cit. p. 194.
34 Ibid. p. 161.
35 Ibid. p. 193.
36 Holland, G., ‘Want an Adaptable Workforce? Then Invest in Young People, Conference Told’, Employment Gazette, 88:7 (07 1980), 718.Google Scholar