ENGLAND RUGBY ICON LAWRENCE DALLAGLIO FEARS GENERATION OF ‘BRITAIN’S LOST BOYS’ WILL BE LOST TO LIFE OF CRIME

England rugby icon Lawrence Dallaglio has called for cross-party action to stop a lost generation of boys falling to a life of crime.

Speaking on GB News, Lawrence Dallaglio commented on a new report into the topic.

He said: “Boys are behind girls; it takes a while for young men to develop. I’ve got two daughters and a son. My son was the youngest, and this report tells me exactly what I knew.

“But what’s really worrying about this report is the gap that’s now grown between young boys and their girl counterparts. We’re talking about boys being in crisis, right from primary school all the way through to when they leave school.

“And a few of the statistics since the pandemic show that 40% of young boys between the age of 14 and 18 find themselves outside of employment and education, versus 7% of young girls.
“There’s obviously a lot of broken homes in the UK. More and more young boys are finding themselves in crime, in prison and there are fewer role models.

“We spend our life tiptoeing around other sections of society but really, the area we really need to focus on is young boys, and this report was telling us these problems 10 years ago.

“Unfortunately, the government then did nothing about it. Really, what we found with this report now is the same problems exist, they’re just much, much bigger.

“25% of young boys are more likely to have a mobile phone than they are to live with their father so it’s deeply concerning.
“What this report does is highlight the problems and gives this government plenty to think about. Later on in hopefully, this summer, we may come up with some solutions to challenge what’s currently happening.

“I work with young kids who find themselves excluded from mainstream education. Wherever you live in the country, there’ll be a pupil referral unit in your area.
“Unfortunately, 230 young people between the age of 14 and 17 are excluded every single week. That is a worrying statistic. It’s double what it was two or three years ago.
“Even more concerning is that 65% of those 230 a week end up in our prison system.
“What Rugby Works does is we work with young people. We go into pupil referral units and deliver a program that starts off with rugby, but actually we get them into full time employment and education, and we have an 87% success rate.
“No young person in this country, no young boy, is born bad, they’re just born into quite chaotic circumstances.
“And I would ask the question, if you were 14 again and you found yourself born into chaos, would you want someone to come and help you to get yourself into sustained employment and education?
“This government needs to create a cross-party group that actually deals with this problem, because, let’s be honest, whoever deals with it, the credit and the reward for it is not going to be received in the next couple of years. It’s going to be something that happens in 5 to 10, years’ time.
“What programmes like mine show is that you can turn people’s lives around. You can change behaviours.
“The one-size-fits-all university role of educating young people in this country is a busted flush. It’s not fit for purpose.
“We need to start thinking very differently about how we educate young boys.”