Scouts to welcome pre-schoolers for the first time

Disadvantaged children to be targeted in 12-month pilot scheme to help them ‘build skills for life’

FOUR and five-year-olds will pitch tents and build campfires as the Scouts today announce plans to offer woggles to younger children for the first time in the organisation’s 111-year history. Thirty-two years after the introduction of the Beavers, the Scouts will invite under-sixes to “be prepared” in a bid to help disadvantaged children develop “skills for life” – and help solve a recruitment crisis which has left thousands of children on waiting lists to join the scheme founded by Robert Baden-powell in 1907.

The yet-to-be-named section will be trialled in 20 “harder to reach” communities, with a view to a Uk-wide rollout in 2020.

Suggested names include Squirrels, Pups or even Lions – kindergarten scouts in the US.

The move comes after Scout numbers in Britain have swelled by an unprecedented 43 per cent over the past decade, to 638,000 this year.

Bear Grylls, chief scout, said: “I’m so excited that we are now exploring the idea of helping younger children develop skills for life through Scouting. We know from research that girls and boys’ skills, values and attitudes are formed in their early years of life. We believe that, by offering early years provision, we can ensure we have an even more positive impact on young people’s lives. And that’s what scouting is about.”

The last time the Scouts extended their programme to younger children was the introduction of Beavers in 1986, which allowed children aged six to eight to join, growing to 100,000 young people in five years.

The new Scout programme aims to improve younger children’s emotional resilience, communication and language skills, and give them more independence before they start school. The 12-month pilot is being funded by £640,000 from £18 million set aside by the Department for Education to improve disadvantaged children’s early communication skills.

It is hoped the scheme will engage more parents in a bid to solve a recruitment crisis.

The organisation needs to grow its network of 163,000 adult volunteers to bring down its waiting list, which currently stands at 55,000.

Last year, American Scouts introduced a Lion rank for children aged five. A study found that 75 per cent of those who volunteered with younger children continued to volunteer in the rest of the Scout movement.

“We hope this will be another way of helping to solve the recruitment problem,” said a Scouts spokesman.

The trials will provide spaces for 288 young people and their families, supported by 52 adult volunteers and parents. Groups will be run by parents, by Scout volunteers and in partnership with nurseries and pre-schools.