Jessica Hill visits a former branch of Debenhams, where Blackburn College has created the Launchpad hub to re-engage the town’s NEET population with a tailored re-introduction to education and work
“Right now, you’re probably standing where the perfumes and aftershaves were,” says Blackburn College’s executive director of student support and experience, Matt Robinson.
He leads me to a classroom for young people who, until recently, were not in education, employment or training. “There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for”, one learner has scribbled on a display board. It feels like a fitting motto for this new ‘Launchpad’ hub, housed in a former Debenhams in Blackburn town centre.
The provision is part of a college and community partnership that Blackburn College credits with bucking the trend by slashing local NEET numbers at a time when national NEET rates have continued to climb.
Blackburn with Darwen Council credits the programme’s “positive impact” for the area’s 16-17 NEET rate dropping from 4.6 per cent last year to 3.3 per cent this quarter.
A standout feature of this centre is its flexible roll-on-roll-off provision, which enables more fragile 16 to 19-year-old NEETs to ease into college life gradually. The college has also teamed up with community partners to support adult NEETs at the site too.
Robinson is “incredibly passionate” about working with partners in “the heart of the community,” on provision that is “small and nurturing compared to the hustle and bustle of college”.
Launched in September, Blackburn College’s chief executive, Fazal Dad, sees the centre as a “new way of thinking about place-based leadership in FE”.
From talking to doing
Dad sits on several local and national boards, including Skills England, and says the issue of tackling growing numbers of NEETs has cropped up regularly. Although “there’s a lot of talking” and “hypotheses”, “nothing actually gets done” about it.
But Dad is no dawdler. Two years ago, he took proactive action in his community.
He had noticed more young people were arriving at college “not ready to learn”.
“The schools didn’t give us the real picture,” he says. Often these students had very poor school attendance and felt daunted by the busy college environment; within the first six weeks of term, many were dropping out.
To cater for this rising cohort, the college sunk £1 million into renovating the former Debenhams and JobCentre building which is a five-minute walk from Blackburn’s main campus. The local authority stumped up a further £50,000.
The original plan was to take on 120 young NEETs. The centre opened in September with 260, reflecting the scale of demand.
Focus on flexibility
The ‘Future Focus’ programme at Launchpad can take on 16 to 19-year-olds “at any point in the year when they’re ready to re-engage with education”, rather than only when the academic calendar allows, says Dad. He believes this flexibility is “fundamental to genuine inclusion”.
In many areas of the country, colleges partner with the King’s Trust to support NEETs through its personal development programmes. But Robinson points out that these typically 12-week programmes have three fixed entry and exit points a year.
Future Focus’s provision generally starts “as small as possible”, explains head of inclusion Farooq Imran, with the first term spent on non-accredited qualifications to build up resilience, confidence and teamwork.
The curriculum is based partly on the needs of local employers, with a “clear progression road map” put in place for learners to focus on their next steps.
When they complete these initial courses and feel ready to move on, students continue being taught by their Future Focus teachers but on a skills pathway that prepares them for a full course starting at the main campus the following September.
Imran says the provision has not worked for a “handful of people” who have been referred back to the local authority.
But by December, 55 of the initial 260 had graduated onto a mainstream college course and around another 10 were in employment, while Robinson says the others had “purposeful individual interviews” to set them onto alternative pathways.
A party was held in the social hub with games and a DJ to celebrate the learners’ achievements.
One learner benefiting from this flexible transition approach is 18-year-old Akeeb Ahmed.
At 13, he took on the bulk of the housework and caring responsibilities for his three younger brothers, as his mother struggled with epilepsy.
He rarely attended school, fearing one of her seizures might cause her to “fall down the stairs and bang her head”. “I’d rather be at home and know mum was safe than be at school,” he says.
After his mother died in 2024, he moved in with his Nana, who passed away during his first year at Blackburn College, where he was studying a level 2 bricklaying course. His attendance dropped to 36 per cent.
Since joining Launchpad in September, staff have supported Ahmed to secure an ADHD diagnosis. He now values being able to access “a lot more one-to-one support if I need it”.
“It’s a lot quieter here, I feel I can focus better,” he says. “I feel like this place has given me a second chance.”
Ahmed, who is on a construction pathway, took a level two employability course as well as GCSE maths and English, and by January felt ready to return to the main campus. He is now attending taster sessions there in joinery, before potentially starting a joinery course in September.
He is also feeling more confident he will pass his GCSE maths and English this year, as he will be able to take them in a small room to reduce his anxiety.
Similarly, Kasey, 17, was initially so nervous about starting a hairdressing course at the main campus after completing her Future Focus employability course that staff had to walk her down to the salon. She now spends Thursdays in maths and English GCSE classes at Launchpad, and Wednesdays in hairdressing sessions on campus.
“The Future Focus staff help me get to where I want to be – they’re willing to put extra work in for me to prepare for my resits in June,” she says.
Small but powerful
In the past, the college would not normally find out which learners had been persistently absent from school until they had already arrived at college.
But now there are better data sharing systems with schools and the local authority to gauge those at greatest risk of becoming NEET, and to transition them into Launchpad from the outset since “prevention is better than a cure”, says Dad.
Future Focus’s curriculum manager Katie Tormay says they also work with schools to find out what a young person’s areas of interest are, so they know “what lessons we can give them to get them interested in a college course for next year”.
Robinson believes there is a “misconception” in the FE sector that NEETs are predominantly “low level” learners, when “that isn’t actually the case at all”. “We have some students that have just had lots of things going on at home, poverty, social, emotional, mental health issues,” he says.
Around 30 young people on Future Focus are currently on level 3 provision. Some have applied to universities.
Tormay says many of Future Focus’s learners have not attended school since year 7, having been classed by the system as ‘electivelyhome educated’ “but not really homeschooled”.
These young people often display low confidence and anxiety.
“Traditional college environments, however strong, can feel overwhelming, overly formal or inaccessible for this cohort,” says Dad. “Launchpad responds directly to that gap.”
Typical FE college classes accommodate between 15 and 25 learners. Launchpad has between eight and 10.
When Launchpad opens at 8.30am, breakfast is provided for all learners, and at lunchtime those entitled to free meals get vouchers to spend at nearby Blackburn market.
“The independent act of going down there makes them feel more part of the community,” says Tormay.
As well as a specialist support team, the centre hosts pastoral and attendance staff who all share a “connect before you correct” approach to working with learners, she adds.
Imran says teachers often have to come into the students’ social hub before classes start to escort anxious learners into the classroom.
For some, Tormay says, “the hardest part is getting them through the door”. She recounts how her team spent the first eight weeks meeting one learner at the entrance, coaxing him in.
Supporting adult too
Launchpad was built on the principle that anyone from the wider community as well as 16-19 year olds can come through its doors and be offered “quality information, advice and guidance on next steps and what they need to get there”.
Tormay says the open doors approach is paying off, with some unemployed parents of Future Focus participants coming forward to seek retraining support themselves.
Launchpad also acts as an educational base for Newground Together, the charitable arm of housing association group Together Housing, which provides education engagement programmes for around 300 adults a week in a designated training room there.
Their provision, funded under the Department for Work and Pensions’ Restart programme, reflects for Dad just how much housing associations have become “community anchor institutions like colleges serving their community”.
The centre is also used by local organisations such as We are Noise, a creative arts and music charity, and Blackburn Foodbank.
And some rooms are occupied by the college’s Skills for Work team and the local authority for short-term re-engagement projects for adults, and on Sector-based Work Academy Programmes (SWAPs) funded via the DWP.
One such programme, Gateway to Blackburn College, offers guaranteed interviews to join Blackburn College as a member of staff.
DWP officials who visited were “very impressed” with the centre, says Robinson.
Another recent college programme was aimed at addressing the shortfall in school classroom assistants by training up 16 people on a week-long level one programme, followed by four-week work placements in schools.
Dad says that though four of those trainees were subsequently offered jobs, at least four others are still volunteering at the schools where they were placed, which underlines the financial challenges schools face.
Duty to serve
Dad describes Future Focus’s wraparound support and flexible approach as being of “high quality”. But quality comes at a price.
He tells me I’ve “hit the nail on the head” when I suggest colleges, funded per learner, are financially incentivised to recruit higher-level students rather than those needing more support, who cost more to teach.
Dad acknowledges that Launchpad “has to pay for the bills” but brings in little financial return, though he declines to discuss the figures. As a result, he admits there are “certain other things” he would like to do at the college that are not affordable.
The fact most learners are only entitled to a free college education until they are 19 is also an issue the college is “trying to navigate”. But he argues the centre is reaping rewards through “system change at a local level” that “redefines what inclusion looks like”. “Colleges as anchor institutions must take this responsibility seriously,” he adds.
Other areas innovating
Dad claims Blackburn is the only centre in Lancashire with such provision, and he is “inundated with requests to see it”.
Elsewhere, FE colleges’ off-site town centre provision has tended to cater for adult cohorts rather than young people. Bedford College Group operates adult entry-level to level 2 provision in town centres in Bedford, Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough.
But in Nottingham, a youth guarantee trailblazer project that launched in October is, like in Blackburn, supporting younger NEETs through partnership work involving the local college.
The Thrive Partnership helps 18-21 year old NEETs from workless families through a collaboration between Nottingham College and East Midlands Combined County Authority, Nottingham City Council, the DWP and community organisations.
Rachel Wadsworth, Nottingham College’s vice principal and the project’s senior lead, says it has involved the college venturing out into community centres in deprived areas of the city to engage young people and their families, in an effort to persuade them to join its employability programmes.
The project started with tea, coffee and cake mornings to meet families, as a “safe introduction to Nottingham College to build trust”. Careers events were also held to “broaden their horizons”.
The project ends later this month and so far of the 60 young people who initially signed up to the programmes, seven have progressed onto a college course and one is going on to university. Wadsworth considers this “very successful” given how challenging it can be to break intergenerational cycles of unemployment.
Back in Blackburn, the Launchpad provision is growing in size as local partners are “starting to understand the provision better and giving more referrals”, says Tormay.
The college is now seeking to launch a supported internship programme at the centre for those whose next step is employment, where young people are provided with work placements, “with a view to that being somewhere they move onto”.
They are also opening a scaled-down version of the Launchpad model for young people in nearby Darwen town centre next month, also in partnership with the local authority.
“Historically, people from Darwen struggle to engage with activity in Blackburn”, says Robinson. “So we’re doing what’s right for the community there as well.”
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