A scheme to prepare unemployed young people for work run by the so-called “Prince’s Trust”, has been found by the Adult Learning Inspectorate to be failing to provide useful workplace skills. The inspectors described the training as “inadequate” and “unsatisfactory.”
The report says that over two years fewer than 25 per cent of the trainees got jobs when they left the scheme. It found that there was a lack of supervision, staff did not always have the right qualifications and were sometimes unclear about their responsibilities, and there was not enough attention to preparing trainees for work.
The charity, founded by heir to head of state Charles Windsor in 1976, has been much used by apologists for the monarchy as evidence of the feudal institution’s “relevance” in a democratic nation.