Youth Futures Foundation responds to the Post-16 Education and Skills white paper

The Post-16 Education and Skills white paper gives much needed recognition of the critical role skills policy and further education play in addressing the persistent challenge of reducing the number of young people not in education, employment or training, outlining welcome join-up with the Government’s Youth Guarantee.

In particular, we welcome the focus on helping young people with, or likely to get, lower attainment through ‘stepping stone’ qualifications and more help to ensure learners can get key English and Math's GCSE’s. This is a positive step in the right direction given strong evidence we commissioned and cited in the white paper which tells us that not having level 2 qualifications is the biggest predictor of whether a young person will become NEET.

We are also pleased to see recognition of the essential role better data needs to play in bringing about needed systems change to address the NEETs challenge. Better tracking and sharing of data on young people is key to ensuring those most marginalised and who need the most help, are identified early and better supported through transitions; this, alongside more clarity on the role of schools in keeping young people in education until 18 and automatic college places is very welcome.

Ensuring more apprenticeship and vocational pathways are available for young people is essential given their evidence of impact for enabling marginalised young people to be in employment. More needs to be done on rebalancing the apprenticeships system towards young people given the sharp decline in opportunities we have seen in recent years – foundation apprenticeships could be a useful part of the solution but will need to be combined with bolder policy reform.