cc Dave Miller

If your child has decided they would like to take a gap year between leaving school and going to university or taking up a career, you will want to think carefully about the sort of experience they want, how it is going to be organised and how much it is going to cost.  It can take 9-12 months to plan a gap year and raise funds to do it.  A recent survey by Gap Advice estimated it cost pre-university ‘gappers’ an average of £3,000 – £4,000.

Here are some of the things you will need to think about:

What is the purpose of the gap year?

• Is it to find out more about different career options or undertake work experience in the field they are interested in?
• Is it to earn some money so that they have a nest egg to go to university with or buy a car or a computer?
• Is it to work as a volunteer at home or abroad?
• Is it to develop new skills?
• Is it to travel, spend time in another country as an exchange student, learn a language or just grow up ?

How long is the gap ‘year’?

Most young people leaving school after their A-levels will have finished their exams by the middle of June. If they defer entry for a year that means they will be going up to university at the end of September the following year.  This creates a gap year of 15+ months! One of the things you will need to consider is how this time is to be broken up.  Will there be periods of work experience mixed with volunteering? Will there be a period of paid employment followed by travelling? Obviously a lot will depend on financial circumstances. The other thing you will certainly want to consider is that the A-level examination results come out on the second Thursday in August. Unless your child is supremely confident of getting their first choice grades, it is probably a good idea to dissuade them from disappearing abroad until the week after so that they are personally available to talk to universities or apply for other options through clearing.

Similarly, arriving back after a round-the-world backpacking tour just days before university term starts does not allow time to do those last minute IKEA shopping trips for duvets and tin openers,  dig out the winter clothes, pack the cases and generally ‘wind down’ from the high of a year away and the exhilaration and exhaustion of coming back.

Work experience

It is almost impossible to get onto some university courses (for example, medicine, veterinary science, agriculture) unless you can prove you know what the job involves. This could be because of family background but proper work experience, either paid or unpaid, is almost essential. Although your son or daughter may have undertaken short periods of work experience during their school career, a gap year provides an ideal opportunity to work in a particular field.  This not only provides evidence to universities that the potential student knows what they are letting themselves in for but gives the student chance to develop skills, contacts and a clearer idea of what they want to do in the longer term.

Volunteering

There are literally hundreds of organisations that exist to help gap year students.  (You can locate them through any search engine.) Many of them specialise in organising volunteer placements abroad.  Most all of them are expensive and the services they offer are variable. You will need to check out each one of them, assess which are operating ethically and compare what you get for your money.

Reliable sources of help

Gap Advice
 is an excellent, independent site covering all aspects of planning a gap year from working out the costs to what to pack.  It is a wonderfully easy to navigate site

Prospects is the UK’s official  graduate careers website and its  gap year pages are really designed for students after they have finished their course. However, it is packed with really useful, independent advice and information which is equally useful to pre-university students thinking about a gap year.

Gap Year Directory does just what it says – it is a comprehensive and well organised directory which sign posts other useful sites.

The Year Out Group is an umbrella group of gap year providers who have signed up to a code of practice, members charter and monitored operating guidelines.  The site is packed with useful advice about gap years in general and the opportunities it advertises will be those offered by the member organisations.  You will need to check out each organisation separately but at least they come with a kitemark!