Sue Maguire

University of Bath | UB · Institute for Policy Research

This chapter discusses the types of policy initiatives which have been introduced to address concerns over the ongoing ‘problem’ of not in education, employment, or training (NEETs) young people. Early intervention policies have been introduced in many countries in an attempt to provide early identification of young people who may be at risk of bec...

This article examines the position of young women in the UK and France who are defined as not in education, employment or training (NEET) and economically inactive (EI). While the challenges facing the young unemployed are well documented, far less is known about economic inactivity and its propensity to impact to a much greater extent on the lives...

While measures to combat ‘Early Leaving’ (EL) have been widely adopted internationally, as a means of curbing rates of economic and social exclusion among young people, the term itself is not widely utilised across the UK. That is not to say that measuring and reducing the number of young people who drop out of education (or training) before meetin...

Rapid Evidence Review

This paper examines the role of the UK’s post-16 education and training system in supporting the young unemployed. It maps the trajectory of a series of time-limited policy initiatives, which have attempted to install a training system for young people alongside containing fluctuating levels of youth unemployment. The impact of the expansion of pos...

The potential scarring effects of long-term youth unemployment and social disengagement have for many years challenged policymakers to develop successful and sustainable interventions.

This paper explores what it means to be defined as NEET and economically inactive (EI). It draws on research conducted in England in 2016 and 2017 to examine the lives of young women who carry this label. While the term ‘NEET’ has been extended in recent years to cover a much wider age cohort of young people across the UK (and internationally), thi...

While policy-makers in Britain can justifiably lay claim to creating the term NEET to define young people who do not engage in formal learning, training or employment, the high number who fall into, and remain in, this category continues to challenge them. This, in part, is attributable to the extended use of the term NEET to capture all young peop...

Background: The UK, like most countries across Europe and other advanced economies, has experienced an alarming rise in the levels of young people (aged between 16 and 24 years) who are detached from both the labour market and the education and training system. In the UK, there are nearly a million 16-24-year-olds who are recorded as being not in e...

An evaluation was commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE) to cover the period of YC operation between October 2012 and March 2014, although the national YC model will continue to recruit young people until 31 March 2015. The key aims of the evaluation were to identify the impact of the YC on the outcomes of the eligible NEET population,...

The 2008 Education and Skills Act included legislation to raise the age at which young people are required to stay in education or training in England to 17 years from 2013 and to their 18th birthday from 2015. To support the implementation of the legislation to raise the participation age (RPA), the Department for Education funded local authoriti...

Youth unemployment has been on the rise since the beginning of the crisis in 2008. Even more troublesome is the dramatic rise in the number of youth not in employment, education or training, which has led to widespread concerns about the impact on social cohesion and fears of a “lost generation”. Given the extreme differences in youth unemployment...

This paper considers the rationale for introducing the raising of the participation age (RPA) in learning in England from 2013 and assesses how, if fully implemented, it could contribute to improving the outcomes for young people who do not participate in any form of post-16 education, employment or training, and are currently defined as not in edu...

In recent years, mass participation in post-16 education and training in England has led to a diminishing understanding about young people who leave education at the end of compulsory schooling to enter 'jobs without training' (JWT). Drawing on data from three recent studies, this article argues that the JWT group is not homogeneous in its composit...

Over recent years, a central concern of policy has been to drive up post-16 participation rates in full-time education and address the needs of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). As a result, young people who enter work which is classified as 'without training' at 16/17 have largely been ignored. However, the decision to...

The current policy intention, that all young people remain in some form of accredited education or training to the age of 18 by 2015, poses significant challenges. The jobs without training (JWT) group includes young people who are in full-time work and not in receipt of training leading to National Vocational Qualification level 2 (or above); know...

The Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) was designed to encourage more young people from lower‐income households to participate in post‐compulsory education. This has been extended to other groups of young people, most notably those who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) or in jobs without training (JWT). This paper presents some...

Young people who are "not in education, employment or training" (NEET) were brought firmly within the political agenda in 1999 with the publication of the Social Exclusion Unit's (SEU) report "Bridging the Gap" (SEU, 1999). The SEU report drew attention to a growing body of evidence about the experiences and barriers that some groups of young peopl...

This paper draws on evidence from the evaluation of the piloting of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) in England, to explore the extent to which a financial incentive to remain in full-time learning prevents young people entering the ‘not in education, employment or training' (NEET) group. Evidence from the evaluation would suggest that pay...

This report is also available electronically at: www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/rr628.pdf The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has commissioned further analysis of young people who become NEET (not in education, employment or training) after leaving compulsory education. This report examines quantitative data collected as part...

This is the third report of the longitudinal quantitative evaluation of Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) pilots and the first since the government announced that EMA is to be rolled out nationally from 2004. The evaluation was commissioned in 1999, by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) from a consortium of research organisations, l...

This report is also available online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR470.pdf This is the second and final report of the evaluation of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) Vulnerable Pilots. These pilots were introduced by the Department for Education and Employment (now the Department for Education and Skills) in 2000 an...

This report is also available online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR396.pdf The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) commissioned the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP), the National Centre for Social Research (NCSR) and the Institute for Employment Research (IER) to evaluate the Education Maintenance Allowanc...

This report is also available online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR352.pdf The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has commissioned a longitudinal evaluation of the piloting of Education Maintenance Allowances (EMAs). The evaluation is being undertaken by a consortium of research organisations, led by the Centre for...

One of the main aims of the Government's Connexions Strategy is to provide financial support for young people who might otherwise be unable to remain in fulltime education post-16; that is, after the end of compulsory schooling. EMA is a means-tested allowance available to 16 to 19 year olds. It aims to encourage participation, retention and achiev...

This paper summarises the conclusions from a more extensive report commissioned by the Treasury and the Ministry of Social Policy to provide an explanation of growth in welfare benefit receipt in Britain in the period 1971 to 1997. The study is structured around a simple heuristic model of four sets of influences, 'drivers', the interaction of whic...

This report is also available online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR678.pdf This is the fourth and final report of the longitudinal quantitative evaluation of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) pilots. The evaluation was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) from a consortium of research organ...

This report is also available online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR353.pdf This report refers to findings from the first year of the EMA pilot in Leeds and London, which was September 1999 to August 2000.