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9 June 2026

The solutions to the NEET crisis will not be neat

Tackling this crisis will require much more than expanding youth provision. The real challenge is fixing the systems that push too many young people out of education and employment in the first place
Ben Rowland Guest Contributor

Chief executive, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP)

4 min read
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The much-anticipated interim Milburn Report is comprehensive and powerful, especially coinciding with the news that there are now more than 1 million NEETs.

Milburn has articulated the problem with nuance and humanity.  But, as he himself said when I saw him last week by chance in Parliament Square, the diagnosis is easy.  Creating the solutions is the hard part.

Moving at pace and against the backdrop of major political uncertainty is a huge task and will, ironically, be made harder by the very thing that makes this report so powerful: the human stories of NEETs (those not in education, employment or training), brought to life powerfully and movingly.

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