Youth plan dominates Key's state of nation speech

National leader John Key has used his annual state of the nation speech to outline a "Youth Plan" covering education and training and youth crime. The main points are:

* A "Youth Guarantee" for education and training:

National will provide a universal education entitlement for all 16- and 17-year-olds to access, free of charge, a programme of study towards school-level qualifications. It will allow this group to access education at a non-school provider for example, a polytechnic, wananga, or private training establishment if it can better meet their needs than a school.

Courses will have to meet strict quality criteria and the new entitlement will be on top of, not instead of, education entitlements young people have now.

Sixteen and 17-year-olds who are not working, and who fail to take up this new entitlement, will not be eligible for a benefit.

* Youth Justice:

National will extend Youth Court jurisdiction to cover 12 and 13-year-olds accused of serious offences, with a new range of compulsory orders and more funding for relevant services and programmes.

New sentences will include "Fresh Start Programmes", year-long, intensive supervision schemes designed to instil discipline and address underlying causes of offending. They will include up to 3 months' residential training at, for example, an army facility.

Mentoring programmes will be used to provide role models to young offenders for up to 12 months.

Young offenders with drug and alcohol problems could be made to undergo treatment.

Maximum residential sentences will be increased from three to six months.

Non-compliance with new court-ordered supervision contracts will result in electronic monitoring using an ankle bracelet.

Parents of young offenders could be made to undergo parenting programmes if problems at home are contributing to their child's offending.

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