The Youth Achievement Awards are a well-respected national award, with over 17,000 young people from over 1,000 different youth groups participating in the Awards. In the past year 4,500 young people have received recognition from ASDAN for their achievements in the Youth Achievement Awards.
The Youth Achievement Awards were developed with two key purposes:
- helping youth workers develop more effective participative youth work.
- to recognise and accredit young people’s achievements and learning.
The Youth Achievement Awards started as a pilot project run from 1994 to 1997 funded by the National Lottery Board. The project successfully developed the first national award to utilise a youth work model in order to accredit young people’s achievements and learning from youth work.
The development stages of the Award were led by John Huskins, a leading educational consultant, drawing on the original framework and structure of the ASDAN Awards, which have been so successful in a formal educational context. We recommend that you read the following training handbooks:
- 'Quality Work with Young People - developing social skills & diversion from risk'
- 'From Disaffection to Social Inclusion - a social skills preparation for active citizenship and employment'
The impact of YAA upon young people’s perception of positive life choices
Key findings of the report, Small Steps and Giant Leaps, An Evaluation of UK Youth’s Youth Achievement Awards, shows that conventional measures of educational achievement tend not to be very useful at recording successes of young people who find themselves on the margins of formal schooling and are at risk of being left behind in terms of their skills, education and aspirations.
Measuring the performance of young people by the Government’s standard benchmark of 5 grade A-C GCSEs does not work well for young people who have experienced difficult personal, situational and relational circumstances which often accompany living in multiply-deprived areas.So it is important to recognise the value of small steps in building bridges to education, training and work.
UK Youth, the report shows, works with young people to show them that they can do things successfully on their own and then with others to meet defined challenges. For young people who lack confidence because they are rarely shown that they can be successful, either at school or at home, this can bring real benefits.
The in-depth observation and interview work with young people and project practitioners demonstrates achievements such as:
- Improved social interaction and better behaviour management
Feel more engaged in the learning process than in a formal school environment Gain improved life and employability skills with more confidence, commitment and dedication to the challenges they have agreed to tackle Reported higher aspirations and more motivation and felt very proud of their achievements The Youth Achievement Awards:
- Offer a flexible, person centred approach to non-formal learning which particularly benefits young people who do less well in a conventional school setting whose capabilities and motivation are affected by different situational, personal and relational factors
They also help young people who do well at school by providing additional activities outside the classroom Are flexible which allows for delivery in many contexts and to students with different levels of confidence and ability Set individual challenges which promote a young person’s ‘achievement’ level and offers rewards for this. Dr Peter van den Graaf, who led the research, said: “Setting individual challenges promotes the young person’s ‘achievement’ level rather than offering a ‘performance’ level across a whole cohort of participants as is the case with formal qualifications in a school setting.This is particularly important for young people from the poorest backgrounds who may not be motivated or engaged in learning because of personal circumstances.”
John Bateman, Chief Executive of UK Youth, said: “I am delighted that the Social Futures Institute research confirms our anecdotal evidence of the value of the Youth Achievement Awards.This research shows that we need more rungs on the qualification ladder.Even the smallest achievements should be recognised so that young people with a Youth Achievement Award accreditation gain the necessary confidence to raise their aspirations and realise their potential to access employment and further training.”
Methodology
Robust social scientific analysis involved the triangulation of empirical evidence from a range of sources and methodologies to assess how the YAA programme works and how it benefits young people.This included the analysis of previous evaluation work on YAAs; observation of practice at YAA training and moderating sessions and of practice at YAA centres; interviews with 22 young people and staff at YAA centres and interviews with 10 alumni and five stakeholders of the YAAs.The YAA annual conference was also observed and interviews were also undertaken there.
The results from this project inform the development of a new model for Youth Achievement Foundations by UK Youth. This national pathfinder works with young people who have been excluded from school or are close to exclusion. The research team have developed methodologies to explore success over time in building positive life choices which are being rolled out in the new three year pathfinder study.
Please click on the link below to download the final report:
