Youth Opportunities Card scrapped!

A plan to reward teenagers with "good behaviour cards" to spend on sport and leisure activities has been abandoned. 

The Youth Opportunities Card (YOC) was promised as part of the "Youth Matters" Green Paper . It was planned to build on the Connexions Card which died at the same time (Feb). It was modelled on the successful Young Scot card, but was flawed in that the connexions card used magnetic swipe technology, whereas the YOC planned to use Smartcards with Chip and Pin. Kent was one of the Local Authorities invited by DfES to take part in the pilot, but we walked away when the flaws were realised. Others pressed on regardless!

Ministers say the pilot scheme hit technological problems and revealed the costs would outweigh the benefits. They spent £2m piloting the scheme with 10 local authorities but found it would not be cost-effective.  There was a need to develop new technology for it, which meant it would have been twice as expensive as planned.

There were plans to make it the one-stop card for all young peoples services, including school services and transactions ...
Published Thursday, March 22, 2007 9:58 PM by AlanDay
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