Great British National Service - How national service could develop skills,

In a form of quid-pro-quo arrangement, the temporary soldiers became “stakeholders” of the democratic polity which paved the way for the extension of the franchise to large swathes of the male population.62 Military service also impacted key metrics for a healthy democracy such as voter turnout or national pride. [...] Those active in the youth sector, many of whom are directly involved in the implementation of the program, have highlighted the difficulties of finding facilities or staff to scale up the SNU from 32,000 participants to the 800,000 in that age bracket. [...] The current capacity that the state can mobilise as accommodation is “clearly inferior to what would be necessary to host between 210,000 and 280,000 young people simultaneously” according to a report from the French Senate.98 Figure 10 below shows the types of venues that have been used to date in the “Cohesion” phase of the SNU. [...] A third of the participants in the early stages of the SNU came from “uniformed” families (such as the army and police) despite representing only 1.3% of the population.132 Two thirds (63%) of SNU participants also reported having good or excellent results at school.133 In the UK, Millenium Cohort study data from 2015 shows that 45% of young people in the least deprived decile attended youth clubs. [...] This operational constraint has limited expansion of the NCS in the past, particularly in the context of funding reductions to the youth sector in the early 2010s.