NEET churn - how can it be stopped?
What is NEET?
Apart from another government acronym that very neatly pigeon holes a growing problem, put simply, NEET means young people aged 16-19 who are Not in Employment Education or Training.
And churn?
NEET young people who are continually returning to NEET courses.
Despite all government interventions over the last 10 years, the volume of youth unemployment has remained stubbornly hard to shift. Research has found that a high percentage of young people referred onto NEET courses by organisations commissioned to engage them are returning to the NEET pool when the course finishes.
So, what's gone wrong? Well has it gone wrong? Maybe the wrong questions are being asked and the wrong measures employed. If our measure of success is the overall reduction in NEET numbers, at a time like this of general high unemployment, it is impossible to make a huge short-term impact. Perhaps one issue to address is how we measure the success of programmes rather than the coarse measure of NEET. It should be about long term progression.
In addition, we find that most NEET young people do want employment and many are prepared to train and learn to reach this objective. It is an irritating cliché that NEET young people are a bunch of hoodies who can't be bothered.
Many young people have issues that prevent them from sustained engagement. This has long been recognised by those who work in this field; issues include travel, family dynamics amongst other factors.
In recognition of this, BXL is developing a whole-family/extended family approach to NEET progression, and aims to lobby commissioners to change how funding is targeted. More of this in the near future!
NEET funding needs to differentiate between project aims. Those young people that have been disengaged for some considerable time can need a long lead-in time to be ready for EET. Positive outcomes are initially soft outcomes. Soft outcomes include raised self esteem and confidence, better time keeping, learned skills to handle difficult situations; all notoriously difficult to measure but vital for a young person's success to be sustained.
Traditional commissioning from Local Authorities, Central Government is predicated on an over-simplified view of removal from the NEET register. With the current economic climate, continuing with this as a success factor will simply leady to wide scale perceived failure of many programmes. Which aren't actually failing-but the measures are inadequate.
One answer is for funding to be linked to long term progressions, just as it is with BXL's Elev8 project. The LSC funded programme was ground-breaking in that it looked at the situation of the NEET young person holistically, and lessons can be learned by other commissioners as to how to change their funding objectives to more closely align with the steps a young person has to take moving from NEET to EET.
At BXL we've also recognised that some young people just want an opportunity to prove themselves as they don't have the right entry requirements to many programmes on offer. In close collaboration with delivery partners these openings have been generated to give young people those opportunities once denied to them, and as a result, along with the Elev8 programme, we're making a direct impact on NEET churn.
