For people without any work experience, getting a job is not easy.
I think this scheme is a good thing, because if someone completes it then it shows that they are not work-shy. Getting onto a career can be very difficult if you didn't have a job through school. There is no way to distinguish the people with no experience but who are hard-working, and the people with no experience because they have avoided work at all costs.
In this way, it is very useful for people who had issues through school - my experience was some tough s* that made me an inch off suicide between the ages of 15-18; work was the least of my problems at that time. Now, I have managed to get a part-time job during my degree. But if I wasn't doing a degree and couldn't find a full-time job, I would have no way of showing that what was making me avoid work was temporary, and I am in fact reliable and hard-working. This scheme allows people to accumulate evidence that they are good workers, if given a chance.