Report

Finding a NEET solution

This report from UK think tank EDSK looks at how to prevent young people from falling out of our education system.

On the day that the Office for National Statistics releases its latest unemployment figures, a new report from the education think tank EDSK finds that on current trends it will take over 150 years before there are no longer any young people who are ‘not in education, employment or training’ (NEET) in England. At the end of the 2021, the proportion of young people who were NEET after leaving school or college stood at 12.6 per cent – just 0.4 per cent lower than in 2016 and only 0.7 per cent lower than in 2002. As a result, the report calls on the government to overhaul the secondary education system to ensure that vulnerable young people do not get left behind during these crucial years in their academic and personal development. The report concludes by setting out a new approach to reducing the number of young people who do not make a successful transition from education to employment, with an emphasis on ‘prevention’ rather than ‘cure’.