Are we preparing young people for the future?

“All I know is that it is a mad system that instead of investing early on, they spend twenty times that locking them up”.

Have you been watching the new series of Sherwood on BBC1? The above quote is taken from a community leader in the programme who runs a youth boxing club in Nottingham. She’s lamenting the cuts to youth services and succinctly highlighting the short-sightedness of these cuts.

Sherwood is set in Nottingham in the early 2000s at a time when the city was one of the most deprived and violent in England. It was when it earnt the less than desirable name ‘Shottingham’ as a result. But the youth worker’s view feels just as relevant today as it was back then.

Now, of course not every child who doesn’t get the support they need early on ends up in prison. (Although our over populated prisons may be telling a different story, public sector expenditure on prisons in 20/21 was £5.51 billion, in 2017/18 it was £4.31 billion. I am hopeful that my friend James Timpson in his new role will get the support to implement needed changes to this system…..but that’s another article.) I believe there is always a need to invest heavily and effectively in our young people.

Education needs a reboot

This week sees thousands of children return to school after the summer holiday. While many of them won’t be relishing the idea, most families will reap the rewards of their children gaining an education.
As a country we should be proud that so many have the opportunity to learn – this is not the case worldwide of course.

But that doesn’t mean that we’ve got it all right. In fact, I believe that things really do need to change. They need to improve. We need to do better. Our education system has remained pretty much the same since the Victorian era. Children sitting at desks facing a teacher who imparts their knowledge. Children then taking tests to ‘prove’ they have learnt what they’ve been told.

Does this approach prepare kids for their future in the world that we now live or that they will live in when they leave school? Does what they spend years studying give them the skills really they need? What about those who still today ‘slip through the net’ – what more can we do here?

Education and getting it right for the next generation is something I feel very strongly about and always have. As many of you will know, I spend a lot of time working with the Haberdashers’ Schools and talking to young people about their future. My advice is always to ask them ‘what do you love?’, ‘what are you good at?’ and ‘who will pay you to do that?’. My belief is that schools should give them the opportunities to be able to find their answers to these questions. I’m not convinced they all do right now.

Financial knowledge is power

I also want young people to learn about finance and managing money. The fact that building a comprehensive understanding of budgeting, taxation, interest rates, compound interest, debt etc is not on our curriculum is something I desperately want to change. These are all things we need to know about to not just keep our head above water but help give us the firm foundations we need to thrive.

This is why the next issue of SKQ (due out start of Oct) will focus on young people and education – the importance of financial knowhow, the need for  investment early on (as per the youth worker’s point in Sherwood), different approaches to education and the shortfall in special educational needs are all topics tipped for the magazine. Watch this space, as they say.

And if you have any thoughts and ideas about the questions and issues raised here, I’d really love to hear them and to start a conversation…..