Board of Education and successors: Further Education Branch and successors: Youth...

ED 124

1938-1974

General policy files of the Board of Education and successors relating to various aspects of youth welfare following the assumption of direct responsibility for youth welfare services by the Board of Education on the dissolution of the National Fitness Council in October 1939.

The papers include official circulars, memoranda and publications as well as minutes and papers of the National Youth Committee, 1939 to 1942, its successor, the Youth Advisory Council and various other departmental and advisory committees. The series includes material relating to youth registration (1941-1945) and release from war service (1940-1941) training courses, juvenile delinquency and industrial welfare.

Three examples only of training course papers have been preserved.

A selection of earlier files for Wales are also included together with later files concerning Welsh Youth Organizations.

File number order with a break in 1963 reflecting the introduction of a more specialised registration system.

As papers were found to be badly filed a certain amount of rearrangement has been carried out in order to complete information on some subjects

For files of HM Inspectors' reports on youth welfare services see ED 149

Many earlier files for Wales were destroyed in the flooding of the Welsh Department at Cardiff in 1960.

YW file series

Public Record(s)

English

• Board of Education, Technical Branch, 1902-1944
• Department of Education and Science, Further Education Branch, 1970-1973
• Department of Education and Science, Further Education Branch 1, 1964-1970
• Department of Education and Science, Further Education Branch 2, 1964-1970
• Department of Education and Science, Higher and Further Education Branch, 1973-1982
• Ministry of Education, Further Education Branch, 1944-1963
• Ministry of Education, Further Education Branch 1, 1963-1964
• Ministry of Education, Further Education Branch 2, 1963-1964

403 file(s)

Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated

From 1972 Department of Education and Science

Topics

Welfare

Children

Education

Series is accruing

After the Second World War grants were offered for attendance at approved one year courses of training in youth leadership. Candidates who successfully completed these courses were regarded by the Ministry of Education as suitably qualified full-time youth leaders.

In 1958 it was decided to facilitate long-term training of professional youth leaders and provide a substantial, carefully planned building programme and a committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Lady Diana Albermarle. The committee reported in 1960 and its main recommendations were immediately accepted. These included the setting up of a Youth Service Development Council, the introduction of emergency training measures and an increase in the ministry's grants to national voluntary youth organizations and for local voluntary capital projects.

The report's further recommendation that responsibility for making capital grants for youth service projects be transferred from central government to local authorities was accepted in principle, but not implemented.

The Youth Service Development Council was set up in 1960, without formal terms of reference, to stimulate interest in the expanding youth service. It produced several reports on various topics and was reconstituted twice, in 1963 and 1966, before being disbanded in 1970.

The National College for the Training of Youth Leaders, financed wholly by the Exchequer, was opened in Leicester in 1961 as an emergency training institute. It provided an intensive one year course in youth leadership until its closure in 1970.

In 1960 an increase in funds for national voluntary youth organisations enabled a number of them to be admitted to the recurrent grant for the first time. Among these were the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme inaugurated in 1957 and, as an innovatory measure, certain denominational organisations undertaking social and educational work for the 14-20 age group. Grants were also made to a number of experimental projects.