Best Practice

The red coats

Interventions Case studies
A team of US educationalists recently visited London to see the City Year programme in action – a national service movement that sees young people volunteering their time as mentors and role-models in schools. Sophie Livingstone introduces the initiative.

Could national service inspire your pupils and raise school standards? Don’t despair. I am not advocating a return of compulsory drafting to the army, popular as that might be for some of our right wing press. But national civic service, where young people serve their communities intensively and aim to tackle a deeply entrenched social problem, is definitely worth a more serious look.

?This week a delegation of US national service activists, including senior White House officials who served under Clinton, Bush and Obama visited the UK to talk about their experiences leading up to the Edward M Kennedy Serve America Act, the landmark legislation that created Americorps and which now underpins President Obama’s national service programmes.?

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