The Context of the Youth Training Scheme: an analysis of its strategy and development

The Youth Training Scheme (YTS) owes its existence to the political opportunities created by youth unemployment and it retains unemployment‐relatedas well as training‐related objectives. This paper investigates the tensions between these two sets of objectives. Because YTS attempts to innovatefrom the bottom up, it risks entrapment in a ‘vicious circle’ of low status. Thecurrent YTS strategy assumes that the employment prospects of YTS trainees, and the effective dissemination of YTS and its training philosophy, both depend primarily on the content and quality of YTS training. The paper argues, by contrast, that both depend primarily on the context of YTS‐‐its relation to the structure of educational differentiation and to processes of recruitment and selection in the labour market‐‐and very little on its content. High quality training alone is unlikely to enable YTS to break the vicious circle of low status and achieve its broader training objectives. This is only likely to be achieved either through providing specific skills, credibly certified, in demand in the local labour market, or through giving trainees privileged access to the employmentnet works throughwhich employers recruit, and thereby enhancing the context of YTS.

Part 1 outlines the general argument. Datafrom the Scottish Young Peoples Survey (described in Part 2) are used (in Part 3) to compare YTS with its predecessor, the unemployment‐based Youth Opportunities Programme. The data reveal limited success in escaping from the vicious circle of low status in the first two years of YTS. This conclusion is based on aggregate‐level analyses; Part 4 discusses the internal differentiation of YTS, based primarily on differences in labour‐market context, and outlines a typology of four YTS sectors. The SYPS data provide qualified support for hypotheses associated with the sectors (Part 5). The sectors and the differences in the labour‐market context they denote may influence trainees’ orientations to YTS and should be allowed for in evaluating schemes (Part 6). The prospects for the development of YTS are discussed in Part 7. Of the two means of escaping the vicious circle of low status, described above, the former may be the more realistic option if unemployment falls, the latter if unemployment remains high.