Mind the gap

JUST outside Gympie, north of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, there's a small part of a mountain trail which will always be close to Philip Shorten's heart. It measures just 0.2km, but to Philip it represents a week of back-breaking, but hugely rewarding, work.

"We had to cut down trees and dig out the route, but every day when we walked up the mountain, we had to walk on the trail we had dug the day before. It was almost immediate satisfaction: we could see what progress we had made and we could see how it was going to have an impact for the next ten, 20, 30 years," he says.

"And at the same time we were doing something that had never been done before, and we could go back in 20 years' time and say, 'I helped do this'. It sounds really strange and trivial, but it was really rewarding."

Philip, from Durham City, spent six weeks in Australia last year, one of a growing number of students opting to spend time abroad and away from their studies. From taking a whole gap year, to making more productive use of the summer, young people are increasingly looking to broaden their experiences, and make their CVs more appealing at the same time.

According to university admissions body UCAS, almost 30,000 students are expected to postpone their entry to university to take a year off, while research carried out by the Department for Education and Skills last year among a wider age range estimated that up to 200,000 young people, from 16-25, become "gappers" every year.

And gapping is becoming increasingly popular. Ten years ago, UCAS reports that 5.4 per cent of students deferred their university entry for a year; last year it was 7.6 per cent.

For Philip, the end of his first year on a marketing management degree at Lancaster University seemed an ideal time to try something different.

"All my friends were getting shelf-stacking jobs at Tesco and I thought there had to be something more interesting. I had done a bit of travelling before, but I had never done any solo travelling or back-packing.

"I wanted to go to Australia, but whereas anyone can get out there and back-pack, I wanted to have some kind of purpose, so I have done something and got something to show for it."

Philip, now 20, arranged his trip through i-to-i, a travel company which specialises in conservation and other voluntary work. After building dens for koala bears at Poowoomba and digging trails at Gympie, he spent a week travelling up the Queensland coast, including snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef around the Whitsunday Islands.

But he says just as rewarding as seeing the fruits of his physical labours, was becoming part of an international group of conservation volunteers, few of whom spoke English. The group was mainly made up of students, plus two 30-year-old Danish soldiers taking a break from the army, and was largely a mixture of Asians and Europeans.

"To begin with it was really, really difficult, because everything you wanted to say was in English, and everything they wanted to say was in a different language.

"But if you use lots of hand movements and sign language, they can understand what you're saying nine times out of ten, and by the end I was teaching them phrases like 'Why aye, man'.

"Everyone was so friendly. You were all there in this country miles away from home, so you had a vested interest in getting to know each other," he says.

Deirdre Bounds, founder of i-to-i, says experience of different cultures is one of the principal benefits of a gap year, and that voluntary work is a way of combining seeing the world and trying to make a difference. Trips organised by i-to-i include looking after lion cubs in South Africa, teaching English in China or rebuilding villages in Croatia.

A gap year can be an asset as far as many employers are concerned, but young people should be careful about what they choose to do in their time off, as the wrong choice could count against them, according to the CBI's Richard Dodd.

"Employers do see them as useful, providing they have been used to gain relevant experience. Taking a year off is not in itself of any value, and if it was squandered it might actually be seen as a negative in an employers' eyes," he says.

He says the sort of experience which would be considered useful, and useless, varies between employers, but they are generally more likely to look favourably on gap years that have involved work, whether voluntary or paid.

"If it is just treated as an extended holiday, that will not usually be looked on favourably, but if it is something meaningful which is going to have brought out some qualities or developed some experience that is going to be relevant, that can be very useful," he says.

Similarly for university tutors, the value of a gap experience rests almost entirely on how it was used, says Stuart Challinor, lecturer and admissions tutor on the marketing and management degree course at Newcastle University.

"If it is a glorified holiday in Thailand, I'm not very impressed, in fact it can go against the candidate, but if they have taken a year out to do something beneficial to society, particularly if it is some kind of community project, I am impressed," he says.

"I think you can see the world without necessarily simply taking a holiday."

He also has reservations about students taking time off after graduating and before starting work, which is becoming increasingly common, believing it sends out negative signals to prospective employers.

Philip Shorten is now coming to the end of a year on industrial placement with Rolls Royce, and says from the interviews he has had, most employers have been very positive about his time spent clearing trails.

"They have loved it, that I have gone abroad and shown initiative. It shows there is something a bit different about you, and it shows you are not afraid of being uprooted," he says.

His experience has made him a passionate advocate of gapping, particularly for the insights into his own character.

"You learn a lot about yourself when you are out there, about how you mix with other people, how you deal with a foreign country and doing things for yourself. I wouldn't say I was a different person, but you do think of things in a different way.

"It really does broaden your horizons and you realise there is a big, wide world out there. The way you see life changes and you become a bit more relaxed and laid back, and you see things from a different perspective. It has put a spark in me: now I want to do more travel and see more of the world."