Wednesday, December 09, 2009

The British Pre-Budget Report: What Does It Mean for Education and Youth Unemployment?

The BBC provide a synopsis of how the British Budget will affect youth unemployment and the education sector across the pond. Here.

* Another half a million primary school children in England will get free school lunches. This will affect families with a household income below £16,190 and will be staged, half in September next year and the rest a year later - ultimately benefiting about 500,000 children at a cost of £140m a year. (More on the meals initiatives in the comments section).

* The government will offer £8m of financial support for up to 10,000 undergraduates from low-income backgrounds to take up short-term internships. The existing guarantee of a place in education or training for every 16 and 17-year-old would be available again in September 2010. From next month no-one under the age of 24 need be out of work for more than six months before being guaranteed work or training - rather than the current 12 months.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

More on meals initiatives:---

In addition, the government will extend the current pilots of universal free school meals for primary school children from just two areas, so that there is a pilot in each English region.

In the 2009 school census in England, 656,500 children in nursery and primary education qualified for free meals and 439,000 in secondary schools.

In Scotland, all children in the first three years of primary school are to be entitled to free meals from August 2010, following pilots in five areas.