How school absence epidemic is giving Labour NEET problem

Disengaged youth numbers soar amid lack of NEET provision

They’re afraid of the interview and aren’t turning up

Kids dropping out of the school system are now turning into NEETs, and there’s not enough lower-level provision in place to help them turn their lives around, writes Jessica Hill

Mickey Symes wanted to be a plumber. But after missing out on a grade 4 in his maths and English GCSEs the previous year, he feared the subjects would forever hold him back.

And on finding out his chosen level-two college course was oversubscribed, the 18 year old from Colchester, Essex, instead joined a growing wave of young NEETs (not in employment, education or training).

His story is one playing out nationally.

The proportion of 16 and 17-year-old NEETs rose slightly to 5 per cent in 2023. The rate is as bad as it was in 2013, when the law changed to require all young people to continue education, employment or training until 18.

However, soaring rates of school absenteeism, exclusions and home education could see NEET numbers escalate further, say leaders.

With demand for the low-level provision that targets NEETs already overstretched, any further rise could scupper the government’s plans for a “youth guarantee”, offering all 18 to 21 year olds opportunities for training, an apprenticeship or help finding work.

Schools Week investigates…

Mickey Symes

The forgotten skills

While the last government was busy rolling out T-levels and drawing up plans for a new Advanced British Standard, lower-level qualifications fell off its radar.

But, at the same time, demand for them spiralled.

Olly Newton, former head of the Department for Education’s NEET policy team and now executive director of the Edge Foundation, says the increased focus on higher skills “shouldn’t have come at the expense of helping people who haven’t got on that first rung of the ladder”.

New College Swindon was almost caught short this year after getting 56 per cent more applicants (200 more students) than it expected for its courses at level one and below.

Its vice principal of commercial, skills and partnerships Matt Butcher puts this down to more young people “slipping below the GCSE grades they were expecting”, and more being missing from the school system.

The latest post-16 maths pass rate is 17.4 per cent, down from 21.2 per cent in 2019, while English is 20.9 per cent, down from 30.3 per cent.

Research by Newcastle City Council, published in June, found “disillusioned” young people told researchers that failure to pass those subjects was a reason not to enter education and training programmes.

It’s worse for boys, who have lower pass rates in both subjects. In maths the gulf is particularly pronounced – with just 17.3 per cent getting a pass in maths post-16, compared to nearly 26 per cent for girls.

Olly Newton Edge Foundation

Accommodating the influx at New Swindon College “could’ve proved impossible with much higher demand”, says Butcher. This poses problems for next year, when he expects level one and below course demand to be twice what it was two years ago.

Newcastle City Council found a “lack of level-one post-16 study programmes” was “a national issue” as the programmes had “not been an attractive financial option for training providers”.

Luminate Education Group, which runs schools and colleges in West Yorkshire, says projections indicate a shortage of over 2,000 places for courses at level two and below in Leeds. The group’s Leeds City College is operating waiting lists.

Luminate chief executive Colin Booth says the college is now “very clearly full to capacity in all of our buildings”, with a “further rise” in young NEETs expected.

Leeds City College’s 14-16 provision, which supports NEET reduction strategies, is also “incredibly oversubscribed, with well over 1,000 enquiries and applications for 120 places each year”.

Booth claims that if those learners were not in college, “many would be in alternative provision funded at three times the cost”.

Local authority alternative provision placements rose 108 per cent between 2017-18 and 2023-24, from 23,086 to 48,133, and placement costs have also increased.

In Stoke-on-Trent, where 16.5 per cent of 16 to 17 year olds are NEETs, the cost of alternative provision for excluded pupils shot up from £2.3 million in 2022-23 to £3.1 million in 2023-24.

Brexit blow

Before Brexit, the European Social Fund delivered via the EU had a “strong “focus” on helping NEETs into work. But the UK Shared Prosperity Fund that partially replaces it instead funds the Multiply scheme, designed to boost numeracy skills, with the rest devolved locally for a broad range of purposes. The fund’s future remit is currently uncertain.

In Kent, a council report blamed the European Social Fund demise in the UK for a reduction in NEET provision for 16-19 year olds.

On average, 80 pupils were permanently excluded from Kent secondaries every month in 2023-24, more than treble the council’s target. There were 5,228 children missing from education in June, up from 3,600 two years earlier.

Meanwhile, between three and five of the county’s 12 districts have no NEET provision available.

The council says the squeeze on provision along with a “regrading of GCSE boundaries” caused the spike in NEETs.

Steve Rotheram Liverpool City Region mayor

In Liverpool City Region, mayor Steve Rotheram pledged four years ago that every young person who was NEET for more than six months would be offered a job, apprenticeship or training programme – similar to Labour’s youth guarantee. He’s now offering £3,000 wage incentives to employers that recruit young people, and expanding career mentoring services. But NEET rates are still rising.

All the region’s six council areas experienced a rise in 16 to 17-year-old NEETs in the year to 2023, with local authorities “indicating a continual rise”, the combined authority said.

But in Liverpool city, where over half (50.8 per cent) of 16 to 24 year olds are economically inactive, the council says it is “at a disadvantage” in bringing down NEET rates because it has “very little control over many” local schools.

Schools’ blindspot

Meanwhile, schools say they are hamstrung in their ability to understand how many pupils go on to become NEETs. Destination measures produced by the government only examine the two terms after a pupil leaves school.

The Department for Education’s Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset contains information about the activity and earnings of young people up to age 30, but is only accessible by researchers.

Newton believes the government should use the LEO database to provide school leaders with “more complex” longer-term data on pupil outcomes.

This could be linked to new school reports being developed by Ofsted and could “give schools useful contextual information”, he says, adding they might have “really strong academic results but find out that many former pupils drop out after the first year of university, perhaps because they didn’t get careers advice”.

Labour has pledged to make two weeks of work experience mandatory – as it used to be until 2013 when the coalition government made it optional – and provide 1,000 new careers advisers in schools.

Zack Johnson a participant on CECs programme preventing NEETs

A project by the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) providing careers advice to 14 to 17 year olds who receive free school meals found that having a ‘trusted adult’ for career mentoring was “the key to success” in preventing them becoming NEET.

For Zack Johnson, 17, who found himself “riddled with anxiety” upon returning to school post-Covid and later became homeschooled, that ‘trusted adult’ was his careers coach, Anna. They had three hour-long sessions each year to discuss career goals.

He was inspired to apply to a music production course after Anna introduced him to a local jazz musician, and now has his sights on being a singer songwriter.

Of the 1,000 pupils who participated in the CEC project, 94 per cent successfully transferred to college or training upon leaving school (compared to 88 per cent of disadvantaged young people nationwide). Only 1 per cent had quit six months later.

CEC’s associate director for grants and development Max Rowe says their initial assumption was that pupils with high school absence rates would be “more likely to drop out” of the programme. But that wasn’t the case.

In East Sussex, 91 per cent of the 105 persistent school absentees who were supported went on to sustained year 12 education or employment, compared to 76 per cent of other local disadvantaged persistent absentees.

Matt Oakes, assistant principal at Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy, says a university trip organised by the programme in Liverpool led one of his pupils to decide university was “definitely the path for him, having never even considered it before”.

However, the scheme isn’t cheap at just over £2,000 per pupil.

Funding for career guidance in state secondary schools was removed in 2011. Although many would love to be able to provide it, a report by Careers England in 2019 found that only one in 10 schools had enough money to deliver guidance.

Seamus Murphy
Seamus Murphy

NEET solutions

Some schools are putting in place their own measures to stop youngsters from becoming NEET.

Additional support put in place for pupils in Turner Schools’ alternative provision meant at the end of the last school year, all of them had a destination to move on to for the first time.

The eight-school multi-academy trust in Kent organised weekly life skills and careers lessons, one-to-one support and work experience to all its year 11s in alternative provision.

It also introduced college interview support after finding that although many of those pupils present as “very outgoing”, they have “deep-seated anxieties”, says chief executive Seamus Murphy. For those lacking parental support there were “real issues with being afraid of the interview and simply not turning up”.

Last summer Murphy’s staff accompanied many pupils to their interviews, providing a “trusted face” and “the confidence to attend”.

EdStart Schools, an independent provider of alternative provision schools in Salford, Wigan and Wirral, puts its current “zero NEET” rate down to all its learners being supported by a ‘key worker champion’.

The schools continue engaging with young people beyond Year 11 through summer activities and check-ins in September to keep them on track with their post-16 plans.

“Ultimately, we want to develop brilliant 16 year olds who are ready for the next step in their journey”, says director of education Kevin Buchanan.

Meanwhile, New Swindon College is developing programmes with organisations with “expertise in reaching out to disengaged young people”, such as Prince’s Trust, rather than “shoehorning NEETs into existing provision and tweaking the label”.

Learners Cameron and Corey from Engineered Learning

Engineered Learning, which provides fabrication, welding and vehicle maintenance workshops for NEETs placed there by Derby Council, is also taking a different approach.

As well as providing vocational skills and mentoring, it tries to connect NEETs with local employers offering apprenticeships.

Its chief executive Dan Read wants to franchise his model to other areas.

Some of his NEETs haven’t attended school since year seven, which Read sees as “madness”.

Often, he finds “the carrot” of “the security of a warm, dry building and a hot dinner” is enough to get reluctant NEETs “onto the shop floor”.

Tracking pupils not at school

But schools can only make a difference to pupils in their remit. Permanent exclusions have risen not only in schools (from a rate of 0.06 to 0.11 per cent between 2013-14 and 2022-23) but in the alternative provision intended to give them a second chance (from 0.10 to 0.34 per cent in that time).

There has also been a 23 per cent rise in children missing education, up to 30,400 in 2023.

But they’re not the only young people spending time at home – the numbers being electively home educated were up 14 per cent to 92,000 that year. The share of local authority alternative provision placements providing one-to-one tuition was up from 3.9 per cent in 2018 to 11 per cent in 2024.

Newcastle City Council found a third of those educated at home later became NEET, with “many” of those “out of mainstream education for some time” needing “additional support to re-enter education, training or employment”.

Persistent absentees are also 3.9 times more likely to become NEETs aged 16 to 18, research by the Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre found.

The number of key stage 4 persistently absent pupils more than doubled between 2017-18 and 2022-23 (from 172,368 to 367,720). Numbers ‘severely’ absent (missing 50 per cent or more lessons) more than tripled (up to 51,791).

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza says it could be a “worrying predictor of post-16 destinations” and wants “far more help” for young NEETs, “including support from trusted adults in schools or colleges”.

Dame Rachel de Souza
Dame Rachel de Souza

Liverpool City Region says the rise in persistent absentees in year 11 is “presenting challenges with accessing the appropriate support and provision for them when they reach 16”.

It also linked past school persistent absenteeism to an increase in 19-24 year olds needing “additional help” getting into work because of “their complex and multiple barriers”.

Butcher says his college is “struggling to get access” to young people not in school. “They come through very late, as and when the local authority or other agencies become aware of them,” he explains.

In the last 18 months his college has ramped up its communication with the police, who have “young people who they want to be in college for their own wellbeing and safety”.

He says colleges are engaging more with schools than they’ve ever done previously, giving them “early lines of sight” on young people’s school attendance and “potentially significant mental health challenges”.

“It’s a work in progress, depending on the resources and willingness of schools to make that engagement”.

Latest education roles from

Lecturer in Sports & Uniformed Public Services

Lecturer in Sports & Uniformed Public Services

Bournemouth and Poole College

Engineering and Welding Apprenticeship Trainer

Engineering and Welding Apprenticeship Trainer

MidKent College

Consultant and Senior Consultant, Schools and Academy Trusts

Consultant and Senior Consultant, Schools and Academy Trusts

Peridot Partners

Early Years and Education Lecturer

Early Years and Education Lecturer

Riverside College

Learning Support Assistant and Midday Supervisor

Learning Support Assistant and Midday Supervisor

Forest Academy

Higher Level Teaching Assistant

Higher Level Teaching Assistant

Foxfield Primary School

More Profiles

Scarred by Grenfell but finding strength in adversity

Principal Anna Jordan says her pupils draw from values of fearlessness despite the 2017 tragedy overshadowing her school Kensington...

Jessica Hill

Leora Cruddas, The Confederation of School Trusts

The Confederation of School Trusts leader Leora Cruddas tells how teaching in apartheid-era South Africa forged her determination to...

Jessica Hill

Job share trailblazers say two heads are better than one

Trust leaders Heather McNaughton and Caroline Pusey have shared job roles since meeting in a bunker during the Second...

Jessica Hill

More from this theme

The (virtual) heads dealing with a kids in care crisis

The role of virtual heads is “vital now more than ever” in a post-pandemic world where vulnerable pupils have...

Jessica Hill

The true cost of falling rolls

A declining child population is sparking community fallouts, job cuts and closures as schools struggle to adapt to falling...

Jessica Hill

Learning the hard way to accept the difficulty of leadership

“Where do failed headteachers go?” That was the question keeping Patrick Cozier awake at night as he awaited publication...

Jessica Hill

Your thoughts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *