Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Teens have X factor
MY PLEA ON NUKE VICTIMS
National service plan spurs young to vote Tories out
Young people of Britain – your country needs you! The day is fast approaching when you will be expected to gather at a designated point in your local community.
Upon presentation of your ID at the desk, you will be issued with your papers.
It will then be time for you to do your national service.
The good news is, it will be as simple as this: to put an X in the box that gives Britain a fresh start on July 4.
One thing that can be said about Rishi’s national service plan is that it will at least achieve something other politicians have tried and failed to do: get our teenagers out to vote.
To be fair to our children and grandchildren, there is a reason why his surprise announcement has stuck in their throats. His is a party which has spent the past 14 years making life much harder for them and kicking ladders away.
Remember their first acts in 2010? Cutting school sport, the education maintenance allowance and trebling university tuition fees.
A year later, Michael Gove’s “English Baccalaureate”, or EBacc, forced schools to focus on the university route – leaving students wanting technical qualifications feeling second-class.
And then, during the pandemic, when they brought in Sir Kevan Collins to advise on the catch-up investment young people needed to repair the damage of the lockdowns, they ignored his £15billion estimate and left us with a youth mental health crisis.
Let’s be honest, a government which has systematically undermined young people’s life chances and now requires unpaid service from them is unlikely to go down well.
That said, I am not against giving more opportunity and structured pathways. I just think there is a
Tories have undermined life chances of young for 14 years
much fairer way of doing it. In Greater Manchester, we believe we have the answer.
We are about to introduce the “Greater Manchester Baccalaureate”, or MBacc – an equal alternative to university route for those wanting technical qualifications.
We will steer young people at 14 to the GCSE options which employers in our region most value.
For instance, engineering GCSE and creative subjects excluded from the EBacc will most certainly be in the MBacc.
At 16, we want every young person to have a quality work placement as part of their T Level or other qualifications and then, at 18 or 19, a quality apprenticeship or degree apprenticeship option.
Our aim is to give all young people in Greater Manchester a guarantee of a quality work placement from a named employer.
And we will make sure there is truly a path for everyone, with extra support for young people with special educational needs.
You cannot build a strong society by making the next generation the target for cuts and then political pawns in an election campaign.
Greater Manchester has a plan to give all young people direction in life – and I hope an incoming Labour Government will soon make it a national plan.