Voices is the Dorset Echo's weekly youth page, written for young people by young people

Our beloved seaside town, Weymouth, has become a poverty hub.

The former Dorset MP, Lord Jim Knight has highlighted his concern of school leavers’ economic challenges, which resulted in them being “dead, in prison or on benefits.”

Today, young adults are put off from the extortionate prices of higher education, leaving them in this state of poverty.

However, things could have been a lot worse if they had the financial pressures of university instead. This is additional to trying to get onto the property ladder, before thinking about luxuries such as getting a car.

Therefore, the state needs to help the unprivileged young people to ensure a reduction in the crime, death and other struggles that come as part of young people’s day to day life in Weymouth.

Lord Jim Knight expressed his worries about Weymouth’s poverty that affected young adults through a speech at the House of Lords, “…like all the other enterprising young men who were still in Weymouth, was a personal fitness trainer.”

He continued: “The other young men, who were slightly less enterprising, were dead, in prison or on benefits. The young women who did not get over the hill to do A-levels in Dorchester were all mums with two or three kids, and they did not have a class reunion because £10 was more than they could afford for an evening out.”

This symbolises the poor quality of education in our area, and this was the education standards of a decade ago. Since, a lack of funding has resulted the quality of our schools to decline, one example being St Osmunds Middle School which declined from an Ofsted rating of ‘outstanding,’ to ‘inadequate’ last December. I dread to think about how my generation will cope.

James Sullivan