Youth

This section sought the views of people aged up to 16 in the village. There were a total of 87 responses to the youth questionnaire which considered a wide range of issues, ranging from after school activities to the types of facility most wanted in the village.

Rather than ask respondents their ages, we asked which school they attended. Of these, 20 go to Mount Grace High School, 15 attend John Cleveland College, 21 go to All Saints School Sapcote and 2 attend William Bradford.

We then looked at the activity groups available in the village. Although well over half of respondents were aware of Scouts, Cubs, Brownies, Guides, only 4 respondents said that they attend any of these groups. Just 3 children attend either Rainbows or Beavers. None of the young people asked attend either Pathfinders, Explorers or Cyfa and only 4 attend Shell group.

Although 40% of youngsters knew about Sunday School, only 5 actually attend. Junior Mission for all attracts only 5 people but in this case, only 10% of respondents knew about the organisation.

Since it was impossible to ask detailed questions about all of the groups available for young people in the village, we chose to ask about the Y club and what young people liked about it. Of those that answered, 69% said they did not attend the Y Club and 31% said that they did. We then asked those people why they did not attend. The data is shown in the table below.

We then asked what people liked about the Y Club and what they thought would make it better. There were 47 responses to the former question, which showed that just over 20% liked the activities and the fact that the Y Club provided a warm place to meet. Fewer people, 13%, said that they liked the occassional projects, and the majority, 47%, of those who answered said that the best thing about the Y Club was a chance to see their friends.

Suggested improvements to the Y Club are shown in the diagram below.

This shows that young people in the village would like the Y Club to be open more and have more outings. Such results may indicate that there is a lack of facilities for young people within the village, and inadequate transport for them to make use of facilities in nearby towns.

We asked how the pavilion could be improved for young people and found that 48 people wanted better décor, 49 people wanted a stereo or CD player, 51 said they would like a drinks machine and 54 wanted comfy chairs. This is consistent with the earlier result that showed many of the people that attend Y Club do so to meet their friends in a comfortable and warm environment.

The questionnaire found that 82% of respondents said that they would like a room especially for young people if a new village hall is built and 74% would use a separate club house if it was not possible to incorporate a room for young people into the village hall. Nearly three quarters, 73%, of youngst people thought that All Saints school would be a suitable for more clubs or activities. We found that although 69% of respondents did not attend discos held at Sapcote Primary School, the main reason was that the respondents were too old to attend. This seems to suggest that people in the village too old to attend All Saints, still see the school as a viable location for community events.

The survey found that there was strong demand for new clubs within the village, for example, 85% of those who answered the question thought that there were too few sports groups in the village. We found that there was a lot of interest in a variety of groups. The chart below shows the responses we received.

Interestingly, 22 people wanted to attend a dancing group. An earlier question found that dancing lessons were already attended by 4 girls and 39 young people knew about them. This seems to suggest that a large number of people who don’t know about the dancing group would actually like to attend. We found that there were many other interests which young people wanted to develop, for instance badminton, boules, cheerleading, cricket, golf, hockey, rounders, target shooting, horse riding, moto cross, running and walking. A CD swap shop was suggested, as was a sewing club and cookery class.

The questionnaire asked whether parents or guardians would be prepared to either run or help at the clubs or activities that young people wanted. We found that 5 respondents thought that their parents or guardians would be prepared to help run a club and 37 said that they might be willing to do so. The number was far higher in relation to helping out, rather than running a club, with 17 stating that their parents or guardians would help and 41 thought that they may be interested in helping.

We asked questions concerning young people and activities outside of Sapcote. The survey found that 63 people wanted a mini-bus service to Hinckley in the afternoons or evenings. 48 respondents would like organised trips to the leisure centre, 69 wanted trips to the cinema and 65 stated that they would like trips to the bowling alley. We asked for other ideas, and found that trips to go shopping, attend sporting events or go ice skating or lazerquest or visiting skateboard parks registered several votes. Other ideas included trips to Beamanor Hall, Burbage Common, a paintballing centre and the theatre. One optimistic respondent thought Spain would be a good place for a visit!

We asked young people in the village which things they would like the most, and gave them eight options. The intention of this question was to try to prioritise the things that young people wanted. The bar chart below shows the results we obtained.

Since there are a wide range of after school activities available to young people, we asked whether or not they attended. We found that just under half of the respondents did attend after school activities. Of those that did not, we found that the main reasons were a lack of activities which were interesting, or not enough time. Perhaps unsurprisingly a significant number did not attend because they do not like school, and also, a good number of respondents did not attend due to lack of transport.

Finally, we asked young people for other ideas or suggestions, this is what we got!