I hope what they define as "key skills" won''t be fairly useless to most, or set a lot of people on a path they don't want, that's the deal breaker for me. It sucks that those who decided to not go into further education are now being forced to continue education for this, especially if the qualification available to them are useless for what they want to do. It's too early for me to judge much on it, but with how things generally work in the government, he probably didn't talk to many 18-21 year olds who claim jobseekers, about why they left education when they did, and what would really help them out . So to me right now it doesn't seem at all well thought out. I don't know of any AS or equivalent qualification that will gauentee a job to these people, or even put them on even footing to those taking degrees, or more relevant A levels, and even with this extra qualification, is there even a job for them anyway? Or are they just doing this until they can go back to regular JSA at 22? Just seems like a way to cut a lot of people out of the system, especially if their refusal of the conditions of "youth allowance" will affect whether they can claim regular JSA later on.
So those are my first thoughts on this, if this is actually going to be a policy I would really want to know why he's proposing this, a very detailed explanation is needed.