National citizen scheme? NCS? Any advice

[Anchoredowninanchorage]

My sons school had a presentation from NCS. He really wasn’t keen on the hard sell in assembly, but I thought the info on the website sounded like it would be a great experience for him . Would love to hear anything about the scheme, if your dcs enjoyed / hated it , anything really as no one I know irl have heard about it!
Thankyou

In my experience it’s very variable. Although it’s a national scheme there are local orgs which actually deliver. We have one which is great and one which is dire…have school done it before? I would want feedback from previous students/parents. It’s a relatively big time commitment

Thankyou, I’ll see if there’s anything on the school Facebook groups to see if school had gone it before.

My son had an excellent experience and we hardly paid anything for it. His week long residential was in the Lake District and he loved it. I'd say go for it!

The residentials are good. The classroom activities not so, but still OK.

When DD1 did it, it was a three week programme - one week residential in a the university, the activity residential and then a week of commuting.

With DD2, it was 4 weeks - 3 daily commuting to classroom based activities and an army boot camp.

The shorter programme was definitely better.

My dd didn't do it in the end as the residentials were cancelled due to covid and she thought the rest of it might be quite lame.

A lot of her older friends did it when it was fully up and running and they seem to have had a fantastic time.

Interestingly, she was really keen until they did the hard sell in a school assembly. It completely switched her off and she found it really patronising. Sounds like they need to sort out their marketing to ensure that they're appealing to that demographic.

Interested to hear as my dd has signed up this year. For me it's a great way of meeting young people in the area from different school, some of whom will be going to her 6th Form College.

DD1 did it in 2018 and absolutely loved it. She went with 2 friends but made other friends there (some of whom were going to the same college as her as the groups are locally based). It was incredible value.

DD loved it 3 years ago, in the summer after GCSEs, and would like to go back as a leader at some point. She enjoyed meeting people from different schools and got lots out of a variety of different activities. They had training in public speaking, did a residential staying in Uni accommodation, did sports, raised money for a charity of their choice etc. It was a really positive experience. I think it was for 3 weeks but it was a longer summer than usual and she was a bit young to find a summer job so had time to fill. Set her up well for future volunteering and paid work and her DoE expedition.