Skills White Paper. Good bye to 16-17 year old NEETs ?

Many people, it seems, even some practitioners and activists, don’t seem to be aware that the law requires all young people in England to continue in education or training until their 18th birthday. Enforcing this legislation (part of the 2008 Education Act) has been difficult – the most recent ONS statistics show 75,000 16–17-year-olds categorised as NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) – around 1 in 20 of the entire cohort. Local Authorities are legally required to implement the legislation but have never been given additional resources and the Department for Education only publishes advice and ‘guidelines’

Anyone familiar with Liz Kendall’s 2024 White Paper Get Britain Working will be in no doubt about Labour’s intentions to ‘come after the NEETs’, but the recent Post-16 Education and Skills concentrates its fire on the 16-17 age group. It reiterates the role of LEAs but also outlines new sets of responsibilities for schools – after all the majority of 16-year-olds are now educated outside the LEA in academies. Thus:

We will strengthen the role that schools play in post- 16 transition to education and training so that each pupil has a planned destination before they leave

It  outlines schools responsibilities for improved ‘tracking’ and giving students ‘advice’ including a rider that  Ofsted’s ‘renewed framework’ will expect schools to meet these expectations(!) We can only speculate about the White Paper’s declaration that any potential NEET will be ‘allocated a place at a college’ and that this institution will be required to monitor (and we must assume, be responsible for ensuring) attendance?

Can it work?

At best only partially. These measures are really no more than organisational solutions to the lack of ‘legitimacy’  given to education by an increasingly significant section of Generation Z, who don’t see how staying on in full time schooling will give them the education they need, to get the jobs that they want.

Schools and colleges may well be sanctioned for not ensuring attendance post-16, but many schools already experience significant levels of absence pre-16, while 16-17 year olds no longer participating can’t be threatened with a loss of benefits, the stick Kendall used to beat those 18 or older, because few of this age group qualify for these.

Though these proposals form part of a ‘skills’ White Paper, without major changes to the economy and labour market recruitment (once again the WP promises more apprenticeship opportunities but won’t be able to deliver these) there will be little chance of improving employment opportunities for young workers.

Instead, the White Paper’s more concerned with potential problems arising from the lack of these. Thus, just as the previous post argued, in an increasingly polarised job market, the White Paper’s proposed new V-levels are tasked with redirecting learners away from the academic track into a superficial ‘middle’ and thus reducing the number of graduates, now it seeks to ensure that as a statistical category 16–17-year-old NEETs will no longer exist. In other words, youth unemployment can be seen to be falling!

Practitioners can at least try to insist that these potential NEETs, now directed back into ‘education without jobs’ are provided with a meaningful learning entitlement rather than just a holding operation and that a good ‘general education’ includes a range of skills for life rather than (non-existent) employment.