The Careers Service: Threatened by Youth Unemployment ‐‐ Saved by Youth Training

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Abstract
The modern careers service has its origins in the post‐war world of full employment. Unlike its inter‐war counterpart, which concentrated on finding jobs for young people, the post‐war service has been preoccupied with giving them vocational guidance. With a professional rationale resting on an assumption of genuine occupational choice for young people, high unemployment could have generated serious professional challenges to those occupationally socialised during a period of full employment Yet most of the careers officers interviewed in a Midlands conurbation maintained that though their day‐to‐day work had changed and become more difficult, their professional role, far from being diminished, had been unchanged or even extended by high unemployment. It would seem that they, like their clients, had been ‘rescued’ from unemployment by YTS. 1 1. The Youth Training Scheme (YTS) was introduced in 1983 as a replacement for the Youth Opportunities Programme. One key element in the new scheme was that on‐the‐job training had to be complemented by the equivalent of 13 weeks off‐the‐job training. Initially, schemes lasted for one year. However, in 1985 it was announced that in future they were to be two years in duration. In 1990, YTS gave way to Youth Training (YT). Under YT, only those training providers who offered courses leading to at least National Vocational Qualification Level II or its equivalent would be able to run schemes. The newly created TECs were to be responsible for ensuring the quality of the training. View all notes

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