Young people with learning difficulties, disabilities and who are care-givers are among those most likely to be not in education, employment or training (NEET) after the age of 16, according to a new report.
Alan Milburn, the former health secretary charged with leading an inquiry into work and young people, warned there was too much focus on exams and getting pupils into university.
In his interim report, commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions, he said that the institutions built to support young people into adulthood “are no longer fit for that purpose”.
Currently one in eight young people are NEET, but this will rise to one in six within five years. However, among SEND pupils it is much higher.
Nearly half of all young people who are NEET report having a disability, and they and peers with learning difficulties are “around 80% more likely to be NEET than average”, the report said.
While the recently-published SEND reforms were a “welcome step in the right direction”, the report said, the “question is whether the pace and scale of reform will match the pace and scale of the problem.
“The risk is that SEND need rises faster than the system is capable of reforming. For the young people already in the pipeline, many of whom may be in the NEET statistics within five years, the reforms need to deliver quickly.”
Nearly one million young people outside education and work will pay the price for a system that saw them coming, watched them fall, and never caught them
Milburn said schools and colleges were largely responsible, as well as a system that focuses on exams rather than real-life experience, with GCSEs being a source of dread for many.
“Until that changes, until schools are held accountable for what happens to their pupils after they leave, until colleges are funded for outcomes not headcounts, until the post-16 cliff edge is bridged and the young people the system loses are the young people it works hardest to hold, the tail of failure will persist,” the report said.
“And the nearly one million young people outside education and work will continue to pay the price for a system that saw them coming, watched them fall, and never caught them.”
Pressures on schools
However, he also conceded that “demands on schools have intensified dramatically”.
The report said: “Rising SEND prevalence, worsening mental health, higher energy costs, increased staff absence and the need for pandemic catch-up have all eroded the real value of school budgets even where headline figures have risen.”
Schools were also facing high pupil absence, which was a “crisis in its own right”, with rising rates of suspensions and home education.
The study concluded that there was no one single reason for young people being NEETs.
“The evidence does not support a single explanation,” the report said. “It supports something harder to accept: that the institutions we built to support young people into adulthood are no longer fit for that purpose, and that the country has known this for some time.”
Milburn will make final recommendations later this year.
