Orgininally published in The Guardian on Tuesday 2nd of February 2010

A new work-based mentoring programme akin to an apprenticeship is having great success with young people who don’t get on with school

Ashleigh McIntosh has had a three-month placement at Fairfield Housing Association. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

In his hard hat and high-visibility vest, Tony Rendall looks like any other construction worker labouring on a building renovation project in the town of Perth. But Tony is just 16; a boy among men.

“I’m stripping out bathrooms and stuff like that,” says Tony, who felt de-motivated at school and quit as soon as he could. “I’m getting work experience, and I get paid as well, and the guys I’m working with are sound. I’m hoping there’s a job at the end of it, too.”

Tony is part of the Toolkit scheme, one of several projects set up by Working Rite, the Edinburgh-based social enterprise that has caught the attention of Conservative shadow ministers, who say they plan to use it as a model for dealing with disaffected youth.

Working Rite is a work-based mentoring programme, taking young people between the ages of 16 and 18 – mostly boys –and matching them up with small businesses and trades to learn a skill and find their feet as a young adult. In the six years since it was formed, the outfit has set up nine projects in England and Scotland, and has dealt with more than 600 young people, 75% of whom secured an apprenticeship or job at the end of their placement.

“All we are doing is reinventing an old idea,” says Working Rite founder, Sandy Campbell. “This is how apprenticeships used to be. There was a system in this country where manual work was much more common, and youngsters of that age, particularly boys, left school to work when they got an apprenticeship. They would learn other things about life, rather than just work. It is quite amazing how far it goes.”

Under the scheme, the tradespeople contribute £1 an hour towards the participants’ wages, which are then made up from other sources of funding to £100 a week. Campbell believes it is important to remove the young people from their peer group, so they are sent to a business one at a time and work on their own with a tradesperson. He tries to avoid big companies and menial jobs. Most of the placements have been in the construction industry and its offshoots, but the recession has meant they have been looking elsewhere for businesses to participate, including locksmiths, gardening and landscaping firms, and furniture makers. Despite the downturn, says Campbell, the number of participants securing a job or apprenticeship at the end of their placements has remained high.So that the scheme feels more like real life and less like a project, Working Rite has formed partnerships with organisations such as housing associations, which link local tradespeople with the participants and oversee the placements.

“We try to get them as soon as possible after leaving school, either at Christmas or the end of the summer term,” says Campbell. “Officially, they come through their careers advisers, who have to recommend them. Unofficially, they come because they heard about it on the grapevine.”

Ashleigh McIntosh heard about the programme while she was still a pupil. She left school in the summer at the age of 16 and was keen to get into administration work. Fairfield Housing Co-operative in Perth, which runs the Toolkit project, gave her a placement in its own offices.

“It’s been really good because you can learn everything you need,” says Ashleigh. “I can take the rent from people by myself now, and can add housing applicants to the system, and can cash up every morning. You’re in an office, but there are not a lot of people, so you get to know everyone quite well and they’re all really helpful.”

Ashleigh is coming to the end of her three-month placement with Fairfield, and has just secured a job with a local solicitors’ office.

Campbell says the programme offers a meaningful alternative for young people who have no desire to stay on at school. “It is mainly non-academic youngsters. They don’t see themselves as having a university career, they have had enough of school. Our view is that we should not push training at such kids, because there’s a reason they’re not in the classroom. They have voted with their feet.

“The problem is that a lot of the initiatives of the last decade seem to be saying that school training and classroom-based training is the answer. We have an ideology that is not mainstream in that respect. Our view is that youngsters can get to have that experience of learning with their hands and in a real setting. They are learning with their hands by doing something that counts.”

It is this aspect of the programme that seems to have caught the attention of the Conservative party. The Tories’ shadow minister for welfare reform, David Freud, highlighted the scheme at the party conference in October and said a Conservative government would use it as a work experience model to match up 100,000 teenagers with small businesses or tradespeople.

As pleased as he is at the recognition for the scheme, Campbell admits to being a little bemused at the Tories’ interest.

“Initially, I found it a bit curious as to how the Conservatives have grabbed it and not Labour,” he says. “David Blunkett was a big supporter of what we were doing and it’s not as if there was any hostility, but for some reason it has not taken off with Labour. It did take me aback to begin with. Here is something really making a difference to working-class kids and the Tories get it, but Labour doesn’t?

“What the Tories liked about this was the way of getting small-scale businesses to play a part. It is simple and unbureaucratic. They like the mentoring aspect of it and they like the fact that it brings in small-scale trades, the fact the young people are learning from their elders and being transformed from teens into adults.”

Article by: Kirsty Scott, at the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/02/work-experience-young-people