I went to my first astro "group" night recently as astroron's place - last new moon - and all I heard all night was "a young bloke like you ...... ".
I'm 42 in 3 months time!!
(Great night for making a guy feel young!)
Still, out of a total of 16 people in attendance we had Chris (Xeelee) there, a full fledged amateur astronomer in his own right, and Wes (Zubenel) had his 4 young children there skywatching too, youth therefore representing about 30% of the group.
Lets hope those kind of stats manage to carry over as more younger folks do get into this hobby.
It probably starts with us talking to them, but better still showing them, pasing the wonder and excitement as best we can without boring them to death with letters and numbers and stuff that sounds like school work!
BTW Love the idea of the school group Paul, wish there had been something like that at my school when I grew up.