At the start of this month, leaders from across government, further education, skills, employability and employer groups gathered for the Breaking Barriers Collective, hosted by FE News and the Edge Foundation. The aim was not simply to rehearse the familiar challenges around young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), but to generate practical, actionable recommendations that can shape the next phase of policy – including the follow‑up to Alan Milburn’s Young People and Work: Interim Report.
I served as a Skills Commissioner on Policy Connect’s recent inquiry, which produced Earning or Learning – A New Agenda for Youth NEET Reduction. That report identified four pillars for reform: early intervention, financial support, local delivery, and system redesign. This Collective brought those themes to life and exposed how far we still have to go.
Early Support Matters, So Does System Design
Skills Minister Jacqui Smith opened with a clear message that government wants to “open doors for opportunity” and give young people the confidence they need to thrive. She was frank about the drivers of NEET status – rising school absence, unmet health needs, and the ongoing SEND reforms that too often leave young people unsupported until crisis point.
Her emphasis on early support, Youth Hubs, and the evolving Youth Guarantee was welcome, but the scale of the challenge is stark. Even with £1 billion already committed as part of a £2.5 billion package, investment alone will not shift the structural barriers young people face. Employer incentives may help at the margins, but cultural and behavioural barriers in the labour market remain deep‑rooted.
Innovation Exists, But We Can’t Scale it
The Minister’s call for local Trailblazers to show what works also highlighted what became a recurring theme of the day, which is that we have pockets of innovation, but no coherent system to scale them.
In conversation with DWP skills adviser Praful Nargund, Edge Foundation CEO Olly Newton reminded us that none of this is new. The NEET challenge has persisted for decades, and while the Milburn Review promises “radical solutions”, we cannot afford to wait.
Young People Want Purpose, The System Isn’t Matching It
Skills may be moving to the centre of DWP’s agenda, but genuine cross‑government alignment remains weak. Apprenticeships for mid‑career workers have been increasing, yet this must not come at the expense of young people’s entry routes. Young people are ambitious – they want meaningful work, financial independence, progression, stability, and a sense of purpose, but the state has is not matching young people’s ambition. We require a system that is more outcomes‑focused and less initiative‑driven.
The “Work on the Ground” panel, involved those most closely working with young people as well as the voice of young people themselves. They brought the human reality into focus. One young person described applying for hundreds of jobs without a single acknowledgement, of being treated as a statistic, not any individual. As one panellist put it: “There’s no worse feeling than feeling alone.”
Structural Barriers Are Holding Young People Back
Young people today face a tough labour market. There are risk‑averse employers, and stark regional disparities. There was a plea for employers to look beyond gaps in CVs and focus instead on the potential each young person represents.
The panel highlighted several structural barriers. Financial penalties can leave families worse off when a young person takes a job, creating a perverse disincentive to progress into work. If the Youth Guarantee is to mean anything, financial support must be aligned so that no young person – or their family – is penalised for learning, training or taking up an apprenticeship.
The panel stressed the importance of second chances. Too often the system defaults to blaming young people for disengagement rather than recognising the wider health, family and contextual factors shaping their lives. There needs to be the ability to re‑engage when things don’t work out.
We Need Better Data
A policy panel made up of DfE, DWP and Skills England representatives returned to the system‑level issues. The message was blunt: without better data, “we’re half blind”. With an estimated 300,000 hidden NEETs, we cannot design effective interventions if we do not know who or where those who are NEET are.
This panel highlighted the need for a much better “front door” into support. One that meets young people where they are, suggesting in libraries, football grounds and community spaces, as a better option than relying on Jobcentres. They also pointed to the rapid rise of Skills Passports across sectors and stressed the importance of connecting developments, so Passports don’t become yet another initiative in the “revolving door” of disconnected initiatives.
Employers Need a Single Point of Entry
I made a call at the event for a single point of entry for employers navigating the maze of DWP, DfE and Skills England schemes, and others made the recognition that regional inequalities, from transport to broadband to local labour markets, shape opportunity just as much as national policy. Under this is also a shared frustration many of us have, that Jobcentres remain benefits‑first rather than employment‑first, thus limiting their effectiveness for young people.
The conclusion was clear: the system is too complex, and every attempt to simplify it by adding something new is not the right approach.
Funding, Fragmentation and the Limits of Trailblazers
The final cross‑sector panel reinforced the message that we have a fundamentally underfunded, short‑term, fragmented system. Trailblazers are promising, but their sustainability is uncertain. The Youth Guarantee is welcome, but in practice the most substantial support, including employer subsidies, is only available after a young person has been out of work for a prolonged period, often around 18 months. This was rightly criticised as undermining the idea of a true ‘guarantee’.
Meanwhile, the qualifications landscape also remains bewildering. The Ofqual register shows around 80,000 Level 3 creative subject qualifications, add to that T Levels that are not yet embedded, and V Levels on the horizon, then there is little to suggest that this will become clearer anytime soon.
What the System Needs Now
There needs to be a shift in how we design and sustain support for young people. Something that starts with stable, long‑term funding and access to meaningful work experience that genuinely builds the skills employers value. It also requires better integrated health, education and skills support. We must recognise that young people’s barriers rarely sit neatly within one service or department.
Alongside this, we need better‑trained careers advisers, earlier intervention, and a fundamental redesign of pre‑16 provision so that young people are supported long before they “fall in the river” in the first place.
Work Experience Is Not Working
In the afternoon, participants focused on what employers and young people need. The verdict on work experience was unanimous: it’s not working. It is too often watered down, qualification‑driven and disconnected from the skills employers value.
Groups were clear that the system doesn’t need more initiatives but requires a set of practical changes that would make a tangible difference. High on the list was a national work‑experience framework focused more on essential skills such as communication and problem solving. Alongside this, the presence of more trusted adults in Jobcentres, Youth Hubs and community settings to provide consistent support.
Remote working, rising minimum wages and the decline of junior roles were all cited as barriers for employers, while questions were raised as to whether government is doing enough to recruit young people itself. Do we have sufficient placements and entry level jobs within our national and regional authorities?
There was also a call for better sharing across the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data, HMRC and other agencies, and the wider use of Skills Passports and digital badges to make young people’s skills visible. Free transport for 16–18‑year‑olds to remove a basic but significant barrier to participation was also suggested. Underpinning all of this was a plea for a cross‑party, long‑term approach that avoids the policy churn which has held back progress for so long. There needs to be a renewed sense of ownership, because at present no one department seems to own the system.
Stop Doing Things To Young People
The closing plenary distilled the day into a simple call to stop doing things to young people, but to work with them. That means embedding youth voice and agency at every stage of the system, and ensuring young people have access to trusted adults alongside better support for those who support them.
It also requires redesigning work experience into genuine skills‑building placements, and modernising the education system so it reflects the real world of work. Above all, the sector needs long‑term, cross‑party funding stability so that progress is not undone by the next policy cycle.
The NEET Crisis Is Not Inevitable
The day revealed that there is much good practice out there. We probably knew that already, as we know we do not need to reinvent the wheel. But what we do need is a system capable of scaling what works, not burying progress under the next initiative.
The NEET crisis is not inevitable. It is the product of choices. Choices about funding, design, collaboration and ambition. If Breaking Barriers showed anything, it is that the potential solutions exist. What we need now is the courage to build a system that matches the ambition of young people.
By Rob West, an Education and Skills Consultant
