Young People's Attitudes to YTS: the first two years

Data from the Scottish Young Peoples Surveys are used to examine attitudes to YTS among two successive year groups of young people in Scotland. Many of those who had joined YTS said they did so to get jobs or because they did not have jobs. Those who had refused schemes or left them early offered a variety of reasons, although many said they had had jobs or other preferred alternatives to go to. In answer to general questions, young people expressed mixed views of YTS. Many could see benefits with respect to training, interest or employment, but a majority felt it was a source of cheap labour and was just to keep unemployment figures down. YTS trainees were as likely as other young people to express these negative attitudes but their views were more favourable in other respects. Attitudes were also associated with gender, a middle‐class background and the local unemployment rate; they deteriorated slightly between the two year groups. The concluding discussion highlights the instrumentalism of most young people's orientations to YTS, identifies four strands in the folk mythology’ of YTS as exploitative, and attempts to explain why young people do not accept the government's ‘human capital’ justification of a YTS allowance well below current wage rates.