Menu of Life Skills to be made available to help 16-17 year olds reintegrate back into education and society
NCS (National Citizen Service) Trust has announced its plan to deliver a summer catch-up programme in schools and colleges for up to 30,000 young people who have missed out on 3 months of education due to COVID-19 as part of the ‘One Million Hours of Doing Good’ initiative.
The programme will be free to further education colleges and schools, delivered in late summer and throughout autumn, to complement their own post-COVID re-engagement or induction offering for students.
This follows the government’s recently announced commitment to helping a generation which has missed out on schooling during lockdown. NCS will initially focus on supporting young people who have faced the most disruption to their learning and academic development.
NCS will be working locally and nationally to provide much-needed support to some of the most vulnerable and marginalised young people across the country, offering life skills activities around job-readiness, confidence building, re-forming friendships and building resilience. A range of activities will be made available to Head Teachers over 2 to 10 days that can be tailored to their local needs.
The NCS support activity will complement schools and colleges’ own initiatives to help teens successfully transition back to Sixth Form and Further Education. The Trust is set to use the power of its network of delivery partners to particularly support 16 to 17-year-olds at schools and colleges in opportunity areas across the country.
These are some of the most disadvantaged parts of England, where the Department for Education is investing £90 million until 2021 to level up outcomes, standards and skills to ensure that no child is left behind. This offering is part of an alternative 2020 NCS as the normal residential summer programme could not take place due to the pandemic.