The solutions to the NEET crisis will not be neat

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.

Why?  Because the power of these human stories will drive stakeholders, the government and backbench MPs to focus on addressing those stories as quickly and directly as possible.

That would be a mistake.  Scare resources, energy and political capital need to go on solving the causes, not addressing the symptoms.

The NEETs crisis is a system crisis.  The solutions need to be systems solutions.

Yes, we need more youth provision, to add to the amazing work of long-established charities like The Kings Trust, Generation, Spear and Onside Youth Zones, and more recent various youth hubs and trailblazers.  Vital though this type of activity is, more of it, on its own, does not solve the NEET crisis.

Why not?  Because while these services are designed to catch and support young people at risk, they cannot, on their own or at scale, lead to NEETs becoming self-standing individuals in the labour market.

Instead, the Milburn prescription must add three more interwoven strands of activity to work with reinforced youth services.  All are needed.

1) Employer desire

Without employers employing young people, there is no solution to the NEET crisis.  While we might temporarily render someone not NEET by getting them onto a course, in the end they need the employment ‘E’.  And each and every employment E depends entirely on an employer’s discretionary decision to employ a young person.

Government should be bending over backwards to create the conditions in which employers want to do this. First, they need to reduce the costs of employing young people.  National insurance contribution (NIC) exemptions are not enough: overall employer NICs, youth minimum wages and the Employment Rights Act all need to be softened.

Second, they must run a sustained ‘hearts and minds’ advertising campaign to make firms feel good about employing young people.

Third, the government must re-embrace the levy as an elegant mechanism not just of securing funds for training, but also of securing that precious commodity: C-suite ownership of ‘their’ apprenticeships and skills programmes.

Finally, government must actively support independent training providers (ITPs) and other providers to engage employers. Recent government defunding and half-cooked product launches have done the opposite: there is remedial work to do here first.

2) Focus on optimising existing programmes

This needs to happen so that they work better and, crucially, are better connected to each other.  Make sure young people on pre-employment/pre-apprenticeship programmes are not punished by the benefits system.

Remove disincentives (such as achievement rate measures) that stop ITPs and colleges moving a young person on and up when it is right for them.

Stop pretending that skills providers have a magic inflation cloak: increase funding bands, especially of those at level 2 and level 3 that are the turning points for many young people as they shake off the NEET label.

Crucially, Milburn and government must embrace the fact that sometimes the best way to help someone who is NEET is to train and promote someone who is not NEET, in order to free up the precious entry level berth, to give employers confidence and to role model to NEETs looking on what can happen.

3) Confront the truth staring us all in the face

The school system and the obsession with GCSEs systematically destroys the self-belief of between a quarter and a third of all young people when it should be doing the opposite.

Complex, complicated and not neat.  But the right approach.