What is the Government going to do to tackle the rising number of NEETs? - Jayne Dowle

It found that during this period, the number of 16 to 24-year-olds classed as NEETs (not in employment, education or training) rose by 90,000, or an average of 6,000 a month.

What is happening here? Why are so many under-25s becoming so disengaged with the generations-old transition into adulthood? And why has this government allowed it to happen on its watch?

My heart breaks for the youngsters it affects, and their families. With a 21-year-old son who left college with a Level 3 qualification in media and broadcasting, and couldn’t find a job without moving away from Barnsley, I know first-hand about the barriers this generation face.

After three and half years stacking shelves in a supermarket, Jack now works in adult social care, looking after severely disabled men. His natural self-confidence and empathy – which would have served him well in the media – transfers easily to this kind of work and he’s loving it.

But it has been a long, hard slog. Jack left the supermarket because a new shift manager cut his hours without redress. So he followed his heart into social care. Then the tortuous process of obtaining a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check for his new job took three months.

When he ran out of money, he signed on with an employment agency and unloaded trucks for a furniture company for several weeks.

I have to admit, if Jack hadn’t had a “pushy parent’ like me urging him to get up in the morning, chase up the DBS check (even helping him make the phone calls, because it’s a bureaucratic challenge) and eventually, forcing him to sign on for work, any work, with the agency, it could have been a very different story.

There are so many young people falling through the gaps because life is just so tough. Some families are disjointed, without parental support. Jack has several friends who live alone; they struggle even though they work, because rents, bills and food costs are rising all the time.

It all takes its toll. As the Resolution Foundation think-tank reminded us only the other week, worklessness among 18 to 24 year-olds due to ill-health has nearly doubled over the last decade. Tellingly, four-in-five young people who are too ill to work only have qualifications at GCSE-level or below.

Please don’t mention the word ‘snowflake’ and tell me that you left school on the Friday and started at the mill/factory/pit on the Monday. My parents, who are both 80, did just that, in 1958, but the days of mass employment in major industries are long gone in our region.

Times have changed, society has changed and opportunities – for some – have been realised. Former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s target of putting more than half of young people through university education was finally reached in 2019, but whilst all eyes were on higher education, millions of other kids got left behind.

The barriers they face can be unsurmountable.

Last year, the Prince’s Trust charity found that unemployed young people are having to turn down jobs because they cannot afford associated costs such as clothes and transport. One in ten of those surveyed admitted this meant they couldn’t work.

The trust’s annual NatWest Youth Index 2024 found that the rising cost of living for young people was “threatening the aspirations of an entire generation”.

Its research reported that a third of those aged 16 to 25 said they could not even afford to get the qualifications they needed for the job they wanted. This is thanks in no small part to David Cameron’s Coalition government, which scrapped the EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) in 2010.

This payment supported those from low-income families to meet costs - typically paying £30 a week directly to a student - associated with college, such as bus fares and lunch.

So much for Cameron’s promise to improve social mobility – remember that? So far, there has been no word from the current Prime Minister on how the Conservatives might even begin to attack the situation our young people now face.