Help those who slipped through the education net
Last week data from the Department of Education showed that the proportion of 16-year-olds who are NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) is at its highest level since 2012.
This is a devastating indication of the effect that years of interrupted education and the pandemic has had on our young people, on their ambitions, on their mental health.
In our education centres we are aware of these missing young people, the ones that were already vulnerable, already struggling but because of the pandemic this wasn’t picked up.
Unfortunately, many of those young people have now slipped through the net.
We need a reunited effort to find these young people and to engage them back in education, training or employment.
Once we had a national Connexions service which could do this exact task.
Now we have a patchy, postcode lottery of provision to support and engage NEET young people.
They deserve better than this.
We need more focus and more funding for those young people who are disengaged from education, and we need this funding to be extended to cover 16-18 year olds through a Pupil Premium Plus.
Elise Temple
Director of Education and Skills Nacro
Picture: Pixabay/StockSnap
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