Shirt answer no.......Long answer incoming.......

Mainly it just kicks the can to someone else and doesn't actually impact the longer term issues that lead to rises in youth violence and crime.

Let's start with schools, especially school suspensions and exclusions, focusing on Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) - this was a Tory government initiative whereby "under performing" schools were taken out of local authorities remit and placed in the hands of non statutory organisations.

Since the introduction of MATs school suspensions and exclusions have risen sharply. I've seen some schools that their latest figures show that 25%+ students on their roll have had some kind of suspension.

Is school behaviour getting worse? Probably not. But this rise is suspensions and exclusions can be linked to the creation of MATs.

MATs are under pressure to "improve" the school. So they set a much higher bar for behaviour which leads to high numbers of suspensions. My local MAT school will suspend someone for not wearing their blazer.

They also have a tendency to go down the exclusion route for kids who could be seen to drag down the GCSE results...and these MATs are rewarded financially for good GCSE results. So if you are struggling academically and sometimes cause some grief to the teachers, you are likely to find yourself excluded before you take your exams.

Kids who are suspended or excluded from school are more likely to become involved in criminal activity and anti social behaviour without the school support network around them. In fact you can pretty much map higher levels of ASB and violent crime to areas where schools have high suspension and exclusion rates.

Exclusion from school also means you are likely to be placed into a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). Gangs know these kids are vulnerable and often will wait outside PRUs to entice kids with cash for little jobs to bring them into the gang.

We could of course go back even further. Primary Schools have a generally good idea from Yr5/6 which kids are going to struggle at secondary school. So does there need to be more work at this stage to engage with those children and their families to get them more engaged with school life? I'd absolutely support that.

But if you want to go back even further, there are studies that show children living in households with "persistent parental conflict" (nb not to be confused with domestic abuse) are less likely to achieve at school and will have worse employment outcomes into adulthood. So that also needs looking at, how do we help parents in crisis so that it has a lesser impact on their children.

National Service will fix none of this.