Forget the exotic trips abroad - gap year students should stay in the UK and volunteer

Exam results season is fully upon us, with thousands of young people across the country making important decisions about their futures. It can be a tense time when young people feel the pressure to make a choice that will impact them for years to come.

Some may decide to take a break from the education conveyor belt and gain some other experience to help them work out their future career direction.  

The traditional British ‘gap year’ consisting of travelling with some voluntary work thrown in for the personal statement has adapted to a changing socioeconomic climate; we know that young people are increasingly looking for experiences that offer something more impressive than a voyage of self-discovery to put on their CV.

They know that they need more work experience to avoid being caught in the cycle of no experience, no job. It isn’t just short term work experience placements that are needed however; it’s experience of work and the world of work.

Under the current system, young people are being tasked with choosing their career path at an ever-earlier age. Few people know exactly what they want to do at the age of 18 or even 21, and taking a transitional year out is a great way to gain clarity and get experience before making that decision.

This is backed up by businesses, who have been saying for years that young recruits aren’t ready for the workplace.

The CBI reported in its 2016 Education and Skills Survey that employers are increasingly pessimistic that they will find enough new recruits skilled in leadership and management.

The report also found that when hiring school and college leavers, employers look for a positive attitude to work first, followed by their aptitude, ranking both ahead of formal qualifications.

There is also evidence that today’s young people in their late teens and early 20s - Generation Z - who have grown up in a very different world to Millennials, are more philanthropic and charitable than older generations.

So it seems obvious to me that there’s an opportunity here to enable all young people to gain worthwhile experience of work and the real world, boosting their key skills and giving back to society at the same time. Internships can be great, but we should also be tapping into young people’s desire to create positive change. The UK has plenty of social problems - you don’t need to travel abroad to find a worthy cause to donate time to.

Volunteering, or social action, is a gap year activity which looks great on CVs and helps to develop key skills whilst giving young people direct experience of frontline services and issues in areas such as education, the environment, health or social care.  

At the moment this happens in a piecemeal way, but a big, Government-supported full-time volunteering programme could make this greater than the sum of its parts, harnessing the energy and creativity of young people and encouraging them to tackle the social problems which many of them see played out around them.  This would benefit everyone, and wouldn’t require a hefty bank balance to fund expensive travel.

Evidence of the impact of youth social action programmes show that it also has the potential to impact on the seemingly intractable problem of youth unemployment, still nearly triple the headline rate at 12.5 per cent compared to 4.5 per cent.

For example, evaluation of the youth full-time social action programme that the charity I head up - City Year UK - finds the unemployment rate for graduates of our programme to be just three per cent.

Social action delivers vital experience and introduces young people to the wider world of work beyond education. It’s a chance to go on that voyage of self-discovery and develop the key skills of leadership, management and also resilience that employers need.

We’re calling on the Government to support full-time social action by introducing a structured programme by which anyone can take time out to volunteer on a cause they care passionately about alongside support to reflect on what they’ve experienced and how they’re developing as a result.  

We’re also calling for Ministers to introduce a legal status for full-time volunteers, who currently are officially classified as NEET (not in education, employment or training).

There are thousands of young people already engaged in full-time social action across the country but they’re denied certain benefits such as national insurance credits, which is granted to students and jobseekers. Being classified as NEET when you give up your time - full-time - is also not the recognition these altruistic young people deserve.

The Government has set up the independent Review of Full Time Social Action by Young People, chaired by former National Grid CEO Steve Holliday, which is investigating the legal and regulatory barriers to full-time social action in the UK.  It is due to present its recommendations in December and I hope to see Government support for a year out spent undertaking voluntary social action come out of the review’s work and recommendations.

We all know too well the many social issues the UK faces, as income, health and education gaps continue to widen. Young people are often cast as a problem to be ‘solved’ too, but they have the drive and energy to tackle the issues that they care about and many are looking for more meaningful gap year options.

Surely we should be encouraging this by giving them the power to make a difference both to society and to their future careers through a transitional year out that delivers. Why wouldn’t you back a scheme like that?

Sophie Livingstone is the Chief Executive at City Year UK, a youth social action charity that engages young people aged 18-24 to volunteer full-time in schools in disadvantaged communities