Can education survive unemployment?

Youth unemployment is a danger to education. That became even more clear when in February the announcement was made that the weekly allowance for young people on the ‘Holland’ Youth Opportunities Programme was not after all to be £18 per week, as all had thought, but £19.50. The argument was that many of those who had been or would otherwise be on the existing Job Creation scheme would be deterred from entering the new programme if the drop in income was too severe, and that those young jobless people who were entitled to unemployment benefit (many are not) must be given no disincentive to enrolment in a training scheme. Few would dissent. But the equally powerful argument that we are unwise to give financial encouragement to young people to cease their full‐time education, whether at school or in FE, seems to have had few advocates in either the Cabinet or the Manpower Services Commission.