One million young people are NEET: what are we going to do about it?

(Credit: Volunteer It Yourself)

Ayesha Baloch, Head of Youth Employment Policy | Impetus

5 min read1 hr Partner content

The Milburn Review has laid bare the causes of the NEET crisis, but turning diagnosis into action will require bold reforms that identify, support and create opportunities for young people facing the highest barriers

In May, the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) passed one million for the first time in over a decade. Despite the flurry of media attention, this crisis has not come out of nowhere. It is a chronic issue caused by long term structural trends that have left swathes of our young people disengaged and left behind.

Since committing to a Youth Guarantee, the Labour government has thrown £2.5bn worth of reforms at tackling the problem. Alongside this, Alan Milburn¹ is conducting an independent review into why so many young people are falling through the cracks, and what can be done about it.

In his interim report, Milburn was unflinching in his diagnosis. Alongside wider problems with young peoples' health, welfare and the structure of the system that takes them from education into work, too many are leaving education unprepared. Low GCSE attainment, persistent absence, suspension and exclusion, and a weakening sense of belonging at school all set young people on the path to becoming NEET long before they leave the classroom.

Between the ages of 16 and 18, many of these young people reach a cliff-edge, when the support that surrounded them in school abruptly stops. Once a young person becomes NEET, the system struggles even to find them, let alone help them: according to the Youth Futures Foundation, around 500,000 young people are ‘hidden NEETs’, known to no service at all. But behind all of this, Milburn identifies a deeper systemic failure. No one – at central or local level – is accountable for these young people, and there is no national data infrastructure to track who they are, where they are, and whether support is reaching them. Without that, we, and they, are lost.

A crisis of inequality
The NEET crisis is among other things a crisis of inequality; the costs of being NEET are profound, life-long and fall disproportionately on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Impetus’ research into the Youth Jobs Gap,² using the government’s Longitudinal Educational Outcomes data, is referenced multiple times in Milburn's interim report. It shows that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are twice as likely to be NEET as their better-off peers. This should come as no surprise; low attainment and lost learning through school suspension and absence affect pupils from poorer backgrounds far more than their better off peers. And early disadvantage follows them from there, through the abrupt loss of pupil premium funding at age 16, ever-reducing access to apprenticeships and vocational training, and health barriers that compound with time.

The costs of being NEET are profound, life-long and fall disproportionately on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds

Reaching the furthest behind
In the next phase of his review, the challenge for Milburn is to propose a comprehensive and ambitious response to the NEET crisis that can also break the cycle of inequality that links disadvantage in childhood to worse lifelong outcomes.

The Milburn Review’s final report is expected in the autumn, and with it comes a moment of real opportunity, not just to bring down the NEET numbers but to do so in a way that promotes equity and ensures that young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds get the extra support they need. Get the response right, and the Youth Guarantee could become the most significant youth employment intervention in a generation. Get it wrong, and a million becomes the new normal.

Delivering on that ambition will require more than new funding announcements. The solutions Milburn proposes need to be capable of reaching those furthest away from the job market, and the young people who face the highest barriers.

At Impetus, we have spent decades building the evidence base for doing just that. As a leading impact funder, we support the most promising youth organisations working to improve education and employment outcomes for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our unique position means that not only do we know what works, but we can harness on-the-ground insight, ensuring policy considers the realities of delivery.

This summer, we will publish the final report in our Youth Jobs Gap series, setting out what we think the government needs to do to deliver the Youth Guarantee in full, and in particular to deliver it for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

It will seek to answer the vital questions that the Milburn Review has posed, focussing on the practical reforms needed to address the crisis: How to find hidden NEET young people, what to do about the data gap and the cliff edge young people face when they leave formal education.

We will publish new tools and analysis to help policymakers understand who is becoming NEET, where disadvantage is most concentrated, and what is at stake if action falls short.

Above all, we will make clear that the cost of inaction is not neutral, and the return on investment is huge. The Milburn Review has provided a clear diagnosis. The next task is finding solutions equal to the scale of the problem.

Click here to find out more about Impetus’ Youth Jobs Gap research.

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