Breaking the cycle I RSA REPLAY

Addressing the NEET crisis

Over 13% of 16-24-year-olds in the UK are now classified as NEET – not in education, employment or training – with a growing number also economically inactive and disengaged from the workforce altogether.

This crisis is costing the UK economy billions in lost productivity and social support, while placing young people at greater risk of poor mental health, lifelong unemployment, and social exclusion.

What’s driving this troubling trend? From falling apprenticeship opportunities and rising school exclusions to an overstretched mental health system and declining entry-level jobs, the challenges are complex and urgent.

A panel of leading voices is coming together at RSA House to unpack the root causes of rising NEET rates and outline what cross-sector collaboration can do to build real opportunity for a generation at risk.

Speakers:
Dr Vikki Smith, Executive Director, Education and Standards at the Education and Training Foundation (ETF)
Mo Isap, CEO of IN4 Group

Chair:
Dr Patrina Law, Lifelong Learning Lead at the RSA

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[Applause] Good evening everyone and welcome to RSA House and to everybody who’s joining us online tonight. My name is Patrina Law and I lead the lifelong learning work for the RSA here. It’s lovely to be here. I’m delighted to welcome tonight a conversation about tackling the neat crisis. Um, we turn our attention to that because we have a dreadful rise in the number of young people who are neat in the UK. That is not in education, employment or training. To cut to the chase, nearly a million young people between the age of 16 and 24 are now classified as neat for a variety of reasons and in different extremities in different parts of the UK. Um, so we’re going to be looking at the root causes of this, what’s worked, what more we need to do. And on that basis, I’m delighted to be joined on the panel by Mo Isap, by Vicky Smith and Jay Desm. Welcome. And Mo, could I turn to you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your work in this area, please? Thank you very much, Patrina. It’s great to be back on popular demand. I did a gig like this uh in the summer. It’s always good when you’re invited back and said, “Mo, you did a half decent job.” Um, so it’s great to be here and great to be amongst some great people. Um, my background is that I’ve spent the majority, if not all of my career, uh, running my own businesses. I started in 9596 as soon as I left university. Um, I’ve scaled a number of businesses in tech and I’ve failed a few. Um and presently my current business which is hopefully my last business I made a promise uh that I wouldn’t go again um is very much to bring two worlds that I’ve been involved with over the last 30 years um uh tech and the opportunities that tech bring but from a human capital perspective because um about 20 years ago I was involved in setting up a uh multi academy trust a education trust in my hometown of Blackburn. And since then, we’ve scaled that trust to be one of the most successful. We’ve got 40 schools, nearly 35,000 young people in some of the most deprived parts of our country being given, you know, real opportunities to progress and prosper. So it’s a it’s a coming of two worlds in in what I do within four and uh working across communities and places to uh look at the you know the untapped talent in those communities and how we can give those talented people uh the visibility of the opportunities that technology and this exponential world that is now happening in front of our eyes has and it has real prosperity opportunities. But the unfortunate thing is that is very stratified and there’s a few who are making a lot of money and prospering and the unfortunate thing about tech it’s a double-edged sword that if you’re not part of that then you are going to suffer. Yeah. Because technology has a divisive uh element to it and and then you become subordinate to it and and that’s the challenge. So that’s what we’re doing uh as in four groups. So, it’s been a bit of a lifelong journey and and yeah, happy to have that conversation with everyone today. Thank you, Mo Vicki. Thank you. Um, really pleased to be here. I’m Vicky Smith and I work for a company called the Education Training Foundation and we’re a charity that uh supports those who work across the further education and skills sector um and supports the leaders of those institutions uh but also the those that do the education of the young people and all of the learners actually because it’s not just young people who learn uh in colleges and training providers. Um learners can be 14 up to 104. Um and at ETF we we’re the professional body. Uh we are focused on the professionalization of the sector supporting teachers so that the the teaching experience is positive for the learner and go the learner outcomes improve um so that they can go on to live fulfilling lives whatever that might mean for them. Um we we are the holder of professional standards in the sector and we have a number of statuses that recognize the quality teaching uh that does take place in the sector. We’re also trying really hard to help and I’d say it’s the nation better understand the work of the further education and skills sector. Um when you have decision makers who have experienced a track of education, so they have perhaps gone into school, they’ve gone on to six forms and onto universities and haven’t had a touch point with f their education and skills. It’s very hard for them to conceive how different it might be and why the pedagogy, why the teaching and the learning is different. And so we’re we’re working really hard to do that. Um and I have to say um we were really pleased um with some of the mentions in the prime minister’s speech last last week um because the ETF has been calling for a workforce strategy for the sector and I think we’re the only body that has and it featured. So our message is getting out there why the sector is important and why it’s important for this debate. Further education and skills teaches a higher proportion of learners with special educational needs and disabilities than any other any other part of the education sector. When you think about learners being from 14 to 104, you don’t just have captive cohorts. Everyone can come in and they they they come with their attributes. It’s you know so and and that can really magnify the numbers. They also um support a greater number of learners from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and and that’s a challenge and you know that they’re not going sort of automatically into your highowered jobs straight onto uh six form A levels and universities. Um some of them their families may have a history of um not engaging with education and not engaging with um employment and that’s the role model that they face. Um they’re also likely to balance care responsibilities um employment or health challenges um all of this on top on top of trying to deal with the pace of change that we’re experiencing at the moment. So the further education and skills sector is the place that can capture and provide a really safe place for learners who have perhaps um switched off from previous education experiences. Um make this personal um I was one of those individuals back in the day. Um and education gave me my life chance and uh that’s become my platform I think. Thank you. Thank you for that context. And Jade. Yes. Hi, I’m Jade Zim. I’m head of policy and advocacy at the Good Growth Foundation. Um before I go on to what we are and who we are, um my background is um primarily in politics and in policy. Um including having worked for the former for the now culture secretary. So it’s very nice to be here at the RSA. Um and uh through a myriad of terrible decisions ended up in various guises in Westminster and I suppose uh politics has not quite kept up with the neat crisis. Um, and at the Grow Foundation, we do a lot of work on skills and training. Um, for those that don’t know who we are, and fair enough, we’re actually a relatively new think tank. Uh, we look at essentially, uh, economic growth in the most inclusive sense. So, we don’t see it as just numbers on a chart. Um in fact uh one of our uh swing voters in a focus group asked at one point when when we discussed uh what about being the highest growing economy in the G7 he said are we even in the G7 there is a significant gap in the way that policy makers talk about economic growth in this country and actually when we pled it wasn’t about the national economy it wasn’t about GDP figures actually the first and foremost when people asked what they saw as pivotal for growth in this country was skills reform. Um 82% picked it as their top um when asked to rank their top um measure for what they see as palpable growth. So that’s um good colleges, good um opportunities to retrain and upskill and again I think it’s um and we’ll go on to a little bit on sort of where skills policy is today. Um but uh we are hoping and actually speaking speaking about this Vicki and myself um we’ve got a new uh research paper coming up very soon on uh sort of what skills reform looks like on the ground and what people expect to see um from skills reform. It’s it’s been good to hear um good soundings from the government. Um but obviously we’re at a pivotal moment in time and politically it’s also significant and important for the government in that if they get skills reform right um there is a chance for example to to fend off the populist right um and I suppose just to if we’re we’re going to go uh personal um I always uh it’s it’s important for me um this issue and the the whole agenda of good growth as it were um I always uh think back to being a kid I grew up in East London and seeing in Canary Warf uh off into the distance and I always see as this sort of paradox, the Canary Warf paradox of, you know, good growth is right there, but I didn’t have the right skills and training at the time. My school wasn’t equipped for me to be able to enter those revolving doors um of the financial sector, booming as it was, it wasn’t growth that incorporated me and my community. Um, and so it’s a it’s as personal a mission as it is my job uh that we get the skills crisis and the need crisis right. Thank you. Mo, can I ask you please? You’ve talked about the tech industry particularly and could you please expand on how you have involved people in the tech industry and how you think similar employers could grasp this as part of the neat challenge. Yeah, I think I think before I sort of I think one of the things everything comes down to accountability and and a lot of times is you know who’s accountable for this you know is it the employer who’s not giving jobs to these young people or people in in those settings is it the education system that’s not really working for them is it the politicians who are not making the right decisions I think the problem we have at the moment is that everybody has the good intention um but everybody then is not able to make a difference. It’s a frustration. You know, you don’t speak to any employer. Look, you go into becoming an entrepreneur because you can give people opportunities. Um, you know, similar to many of us here, I couldn’t have imagined in my lifetime. I’ve been in now this world of entrepreneurship, I’ve probably employed nearly 4,000 people directly. You know, my yearhead in school said that I’d be a taxi driver and and that was it. So the reality is you don’t go into creating businesses or becoming employers not to employ doesn’t work and and the real satisfaction you get is that you give people opportunities which may not be present especially if you come from places of disadvantage you’re more focused to want to give those opportunities but if I set the sort of scene as I see it and and as a person who is not political Well, I just see it and say as it is. I think we have a number of problems which are not ones that we can tinker around. We either take a nuclear approach or we just forget because ultimately this tinkering is actually exacerbating the problem because ultimately we’re creating a scenario where everybody thinks that they’re going to make a difference but you’re going to make it worse. So you got to go back to the sort of root of where the problem is. We have an education system from you know the age of four to the age of you know 18 to that extent which was actually created to colonialize the world. It still is the case and you know you’re still teaching young people in the way that that was set up to do a number of administrators and 200 would run a country of two billion and that was the mission write and read and you know do what you are able to and that’s how you you know do what you do and it’s a Victorian system that is not fit for purpose and I’ll be honest with you this is why it’s failing so many young people today um and that goes across the piece And where you know the further education world has a part to play its part to play in the place is to meet the labor demands of that particular place. But unfortunately again through policy you know mishaps colleges have become businesses and they have to afford themselves. So they have to go where there’s money and that is not conducive to actually helping the most disadvantaged because their decision-m is based on getting you know revenue in from programs that may not be the right programs but they have to afford themselves. So a principal and a chief exec now of a college group is making decisions not on the basis of what does my community need or how do I work with my employers to create a real transition but how do I afford myself and universities have become sausage factories and ultimately unfortunately rather than preparing you know robust and confident and resilient and broadminded young people they are again driven to some extent commercially and those young people are coming out at the cliff edge and all of these transition points are exacerbating the problem and that can’t be just tinkered around with unless you redesign the scenario and then you go to the perspective of the person and the family and the parent. Um and some of you, you know, we we at StarMies have been doing a piece of work with public first and now, you know, the the you know, Bridget Philipsson has taken it up around the white working class and why is it that the white working class is underachieving and we’ve just published it and you can find it on the public first website yesterday midnight. You know, it was appalling about, you know, 2,000 young people, 2,000 parents, 500 educationalists about what are the reasons why today, and if you look at the neat percentages, why is it that white working-class children, particularly boys, are massively underachieving in comparison to middle-class white kids and middle class ethnic kids. Um and if you look at the status and the you know the percentages of the 15% I mean you break it down certain demographics certain groups are worse off in this context and it’s startling and one of the sort of questions was what is the parents view on education now the reality is that 50% of those parents said that education didn’t serve them. So the apathy, the disconnect between what education has value for is missing. So are they going to, you know, instill that in their children or are they going to be apathetic about the fact that this isn’t a system that’s not for us? And it’s failed me, failed your grandparents. So ultimately, you know, it’s going to fail you. So why bother? And if you do not put that meritocracy or value to education as many migrant families put and say, “Well, look, we don’t want you to take a part-time job like my dad did, and I wanted to work part-time because I get some cash.” And he said, “No, you’re not going to work part-time. You’re going to study cuz I’ve not given up my teaching career to work 12 hours in a factory for you to work in McDonald’s.” And that’s the reality. And many migrant families are seeing the results of that approach. But if you look at indigenous populations and we have schools in Blackpool in BUP in really you know three generations of worthlessness and worthlessness. How are you going to fix that problem? Because you know I’ll give you an anecdote. I’ve got a school in Bakeup and we had a you know trust meeting and one of our senior leaders said can I give you an anecdote about a phone call that the school received about a a young person from the parent and the parent rang up and said you know Tommy won’t be in school today because he’s collecting the hay and that’s the reality that here he’s a parent who says well you know collect the hay because education really doesn’t serve us in this way. So there’s a disconnect there. There’s also a disconnect in the reality of how that person or that young person believes that the education system is serving them. If they are disconnected from that learning environment, if they’re not getting the joy and a lot of the white working-class kids are saying that we don’t enjoy school in comparison more in comparison to middle- class kids. So if you don’t enjoy your learning, if you don’t get that sort of connection to learning, what you going to do? and especially when you’re around areas where there are other things that will pull you away from that. And lastly, the pathways to success. Many of those young people do not see grades and university as a route to success. They don’t. They say, “Well, I might get a trade or if the trade’s not there, then I don’t know.” And the reality is this. And the reality continues and continues. And unless we change this scenario from bottom up, employers can’t fix it. Employers can create growth. Employers can create opportunities and those are things that then need to be connected into the place and those employers need to actually be able to contribute to the education system. These are just silos at the moment. We’re living in a stratified world and unfortunately the more disadvantaged you are and when you look at the econ and I talked to you about another transition point the final transition point and we see this because I put 4,000 people who were of a profile of unemployed or undermployed into jobs in my business currently and those are 4,000 young people and predominately young people who for 6 months after graduation couldn’t get a job their math degree couldn’t get a I had given up mentally shot on a cliff edge and the stats say that if after 6 months you don’t find the job you’re going to be forever undermployed and there are stats right now and it was published in the times recently where they said some degrees some students are earning £17,000 after 5 years from graduation but if you went to Oxford you’re earning 90,000 that’s the disconnect and that’s the reality and if you are then in that transition point at 22 and you’ve done all that work. I bumped into a girl who has just graduated. My office in media city is you know next to Sulford University. A girl comes with her parent to actually graduate and she says uh I’m bumped into in a lift going up and I said wa what an amazing day. You should be so proud. First generation family you could tell mom was first generation and straight away she said well it was a waste of time. I said you just graduated because I’m not going to get a job. That’s the reality. Now if that’s the starting point then they’re going to be need and they’re going to be need not unemployed needs economically inactive because you give up and the mental strain and today we are suffering our young people are suffering I see every day these young people have lost hope lost courage they do not see a a a future that is bright and should be amazing for them they are just seeing doors that are closed to them and unless we fix this unless we start to look at the root cause of why this is happening and I say for one minute the tech world has opportunities immense opportunity this is a a generation of natives who could do so much but unfortunately there’s a disconnect in what education is empowering them to do because the education is still talking about chalk and blackboards and every part of that education system is behind the curve and as an employer I would just look to put a nuclear charger behind and just start again. That’s the reality because that’s what we do in business. If something’s not working, we don’t just tinker with it. We say, “Let’s go back to the storyboard and let’s fix it.” Because unless we do that, there’s no safety net for us. And the unfortunate thing is there may be a safety net for the politicians. There may be a safety net for the principal in that school, but there’s no safety net for that young person. And we do not have a safety net in this country. We are actually failing our people. And that’s the stark reality. Thank you. Very interesting. You talk about the transitions side of things. We hear that a lot. Um we also hear as well that employers don’t understand qualifications necessarily that people are coming up with because we have a plethora of different types of qualifications in this country as well. People can’t make sense of them for themselves. Vicki, you’re right in this heart of this transition point really dealing with so many people in this critical phase in post 16 in in FE. How how are you working to in the system that we can’t nuclear charge and take away within the system that you’ve got? What are you doing and how are you enabling people and identifying people at risk to stop them from falling through the cracks? Um I’m first off my my entry point to responding is to pick up on um something Mo said. Um your father gave up a job as a teacher to work in a factory 12 hours a day. Teachers who work in further education are paid more than 10% less than school teachers. They may be already fully qualified engineer, plumber, chef, hairdresser. Um so so we education generally has has a recruitment and retention problem. In the further education and skill space it’s even worse because you can earn more money working in your primary professional identity than you can as a as an educator which which is a real problem. How on earth do we attract these people when we also need these people, these teachers, these educators to be so impassioned that they can inspire and motivate the learners who have been um who have disengaged who who have been switched off from education, who cannot see the reason. If we can’t find educators who can really turn the dial and talk to learners in a manner that works for them in a modality that works for them as well and whether that’s using AI and engaging with them and teaching using all all of the method methodologies that are open to us then we’ve got a problem and so what we try and do and we historically um education training foundation has been the the body that has worked with government to um train in the new curriculara. So when a new program comes along whether it’s T levels which you might have heard about whether it’s refocus on apprenticeships u and so on we then upskill those educators to to try and ensure that they can ensure that the learner experience is positive and gets the positive outcome. Um there’s then the question about actually curriculum design as well and whether that’s fit for purpose. Do employers know about uh T- levels? Is it working for them? Um T- levels were conceived to be uh a route to employment for example to date most T- level students have gone on to university. Um so you know kind of have we created the the right conditions for for technical and vocational qualifications. Um it’d be really interesting and Jade you might uh have have a take on um the curriculum and assessment review that that pending um and you kind of in the political autumn uh that we’re waiting for because that will help shape the future of technical and vocational education. Um I’d also add that um Jackie Smith is uh has focused on technical and vocational education and that put it front and center. This is great. She and she’s talking about 60% of technical skills being delivered by universities. Uh they will be the higher technical skills. Actually if you if we’re talking about NEAts and those who have disengaged from education, we’re not talking about higher technical education. We’re talking about entry- level qualifications. We’re talking about qualifications at level one and level two where we can get people back into society and to becoming more active in their communities. Universities aren’t going to be the places for those. It will be the colleges. It will be the training providers. It will be the apprenticeship um uh providers and so on. And how do we make those attractive um when they are likely to be offering u minimum wage um all consuming in terms of hours that you have to work um balancing that with all of the needs that we spoke about earlier um and and and trying to balance life when it feels done to. M I don’t know if I answered your question. No, no, it was it was good. I you know I have so much respect. Um I can I can say if we’re bringing in things about our own families, my dad was a brick layer and my dad taught in FE college in the evening to supplement his work and he was really really proud of of doing that work. So um I hope he instilled that. But it’s it’s a really interesting um issue there. Why would you how do you install instill that enthusiasm for something that’s not really going to pay you well necessarily um and make you satisfied in your life? So Jade, it’s a massively complex problem u many sectors involved in all of this. In your experience then and what do you think a joined up national strategy should look like to really help us deal with this and to try and stop this rising trend in needs? Just a little question. Yes. Um I was nodding furiously at both of you and and your stories. Um but something about um what Vicki just said about uh the way that we talk about qualifications actually when you we’ve done a lot of polling on this and when you ask people what they think about why they would do a qualification why they would do training it’s not necessarily the paper you get at the end at the end of the day people want a secure high paid high-skilled job that keeps keeps food on the table for their families and it was very good to see that skills actually move from the DFV to DWP and In our view that was a good thing. It was an acknowledgment that skills and education doesn’t exist in its own silo. It is in fact the cornerstone of everything the government wants to achieve. We need to make sure that skills policy and training is at the very heart of everything the government talks about that all policy comes back to skills that it is the horse pulling the cart essentially. So if you look at for instance the industrial strategy and you look at the IS-8 um those critical sectors that the government identified they are also the ones that have the largest skills gap that prevents a significant challenge for the economy at large but also why are we not training up enough people to fill those gaps. there is a huge opportunity here where we’ve got these emerging sectors where actually if you tie them back to our our great FE colleges or the opportunities that the new growth and skills levy um potentially puts to us that you could actually with highly targeted interventions get a lot of need a lot of people currently need uh into those uh sectors. Uh to give you an example, government the government’s doing this major infrastructure push um across across all sectors across uh whether it’s transport, whether it’s new reservoirs, um whether it’s a 1.5 million homes that we have to build um to fulfill demand. Can good training opportunities and jobs be created through that? Um there are fantastic opportunities across the private sector. Actually the private sector is leading the way in terms of house building for example where they have been pushing rightly so and thankfully it has come about for the growth and skills levy to dedicate a portion of its funding to flexible courses. So instead just apprentichips which are very important. 50% will also go to immersive short courses that get people involved and immediately into those uh very urgent uh skills gaps. the brick wayers, you know, people that are absolutely integral to actually see an economic growth um founded in this country. I think the 1.5 million homes are not going to be delivered unless we find the people to build them. And that presents uh a challenge, but as I said, um a policy opportunity, but also a political opportunity, right? You can talk about Hephro uh the runway free Heathrow um of it of its own accord on its own. Um it’s great for for us wonks who who love love a good plane, you know, but if you if you don’t relate it back to people’s lives, they’re not going to be particularly grateful for it. If you can talk about the potential jobs that comes comes about through that, not just the direct jobs that actually go into building that runway, but potentially the local infrastructure, you know, uh the new reservoirs that have to be built to to support uh new towns, for example. All of this presents a massive skills gap but also with the right interventions with the right funding with the right uh direction of the curriculum away from just and academic is very important but way from just academic to thinking about the very immersive needs of the IS-8 of these new infrastructure projects and you link up the two in a very joined up way not in a silo but having skills as the precursor to everything that we talk about everything that we talk about, skills reform to everything we talk about, then you can you might come to a solution where actually you’ve got good economic growth and you’ve employed a lot of people. Um, and that in part also helps u meet the challenge of economic inactivity. Um, you know, you can reduce uh in the in the longer term uh the welfare bill if you’ve also joined up your skills approach to uh the industrial strategy. So there’s plenty of different things on paper that the government’s doing, but actually if you look at it foundationally, everything comes back to skills and everything comes back to ensuring that our people are trained up and that we are putting as much money into skills investment. And one of the things that um we we will be pushing for uh is uh for the OBR to consider uh skills as a major uh driver of growth. So that uh there is also uh political will to to push for that. Um and there’s plenty of evidence that it does drive productivity that a lot of skills investment can actually in the end not just create jobs but create new infrastructure create uh the the new homes that you see the new reservoirs um that will come about. So a lot of fantastic stuff is is is happening and a lot of noise being made is is fantastic. It’s just making sure that uh skills now being in in the DWP uh there is a common thread through every bit of comms that’s coming out of government that skills isn’t just the add-on the nice to have. It’s actually the the first point at which we speak about everything and can I come in on that one just very quick point what’s really important in that is um the ISA the the industry areas the focal points also happen to correlate with where we have teacher shortages. So actually to to get the uh people to build the houses to create the reservoirs, we need to take a step down that value chain a little to say have we got the people who can train the people who can become the this this workforce of tomorrow. Uh and that’s that needs to be front and center in this conversation. Sorry. No, it’s it’s good. Uh Mo, can I just ask you when we’re if we find that perfect storm in an area and Vickiy’s found the the teachers that can come in and can train and we know that there’s those skills, how do we reach the people that are the hardest to reach who are out of the system who are neat but are not claiming and and how how do we get to them in your experience? Well, I think every community is a community. Ultimately these people exist in communities where we have a problem in society as a whole. We have become more and more stratified. We have become so the Royal Society of Arts is stratified. Let’s be clear. Our algorithms are stratifying us. I remember the day when my dad was in his factory. He would go to the supermarket and he would meet his foreman and they’d have a good chat. This was white collar, blue collar conversation. I didn’t know in his broken English and you know all of that. You don’t have that today. You know the people who are in those executive roles and those people who are doing those lowskilled jobs, they don’t meet. They don’t converse. They don’t go to each other’s birthday parties and restaurants and wherever we are. But that’s the reality that when people say and I do a lot of these talks and I work you know in Sulford which is one of the you know it’s the ninth most deprived. I mean it’s a bit of a you know I mean it’s just an absolute paradoxical sort of you know situation where you’ve got my headquarters is media city which is probably the largest economic cluster outside of London as a hub and in Salford where it exists is the ninth most deprived council and and there was a sort of a a polling done with young people who live in the surrounding area and also I mean we switch on BBC breakfast news and we see the sort of skyline of media city. That’s where my headquarters is. These kids will draw the curtain and see that and the Pauling said that there were some young people said that they believe that you have to buy a ticket to come there. This is Salfordians born and bred who could see media city there as you know as you’ve heard. So the reality is that we live in a very very stratified world. People don’t interact. People don’t see opportunity because if you have opportunity, you move out of the town or you move out of the area and you don’t come back, do you? And if you don’t come back, how are you going to instill that aspiration and that belief that this is something you could do? Because what you say is I made it despite growing up in this place. Yeah. You have to change that key phrase. I made it because I am from this place. Mhm. More and more of us need to stay in our homesteads just because you can afford that nice five- bedroomedroom house with a double garage with a nice development in that leafy area of you know we were talking about Yorkshire becoming gentrified. I mean last of the summer fine would never exist if Nora would turn in her grave if we were to see the house prices that are now being paid for her two up two down terrorist. But the reality is this. And unless and until we who have the ability actually serve our communities and allow those communities to see, they will forever say this ain’t for us. Your grandparents will say this ain’t for us. Your parents will say this is ain’t for us. And that young person will believe this. So then that young person does not not only believe in this not being for them. They will rebel. They will repel. They will feel hard done by. They will then be prejudiced. They will then go in the hands of those people who will then indoctrinate them to believe a certain narrative about how their community and theirelves are being left behind. And that’s the reality. And that’s when you speak to those young people and when they’re on their ebikes and their scooters and when I drive into Sulford in media city, they’re there in their black hoodies. And I feel that this is the generation that is actually in front of a mega opportunity which today that young person if you speak to them will say to you, “Well, that’s not for me, is it? And I’m not going to be working in a coffee shop cuz that’s what you think I’m going to do.” The reality is aspiration. The reality is role models. The reality is actually people showing that this is for you. And unless we break these stratified, we live in our own bubbles. We go to we send our kids to the schools that we want them to go to because you know why do you send them to that school? Because the kids are all from a similar demographic. Why do you send them to that sort of place after school club? Majority of white working-class kids don’t do after school clubs. They don’t do sport. They don’t do music. They have no additional experience of culture of life beyond the classroom. How do you expect them to believe in value, believe in the place, believe in, you know, all right, if you want to be a brick layer, you want to be a brick layer because you want to build something in your place, not break it, not rob it, not graffiti the wall, but how you going to instill that value? How are you going to instill the pride that you should have to look after your place by giving them those experiences to believe that you belong here? That belonging doesn’t exist because what they see is that we don’t belong. We don’t we don’t have this level of the similar opportunity. We we don’t have the same status. These people belong and we are all culpable. And in our own worlds with our algorithms, you know, we even have dating apps that just, you know, connect us with the same type of people. It’s true. You go to restaurants with people that are of a similar Yeah. earning. We choose to be with people with a similar earning and so economic grouping. How often there was a time where that wasn’t there that people who worked on the shop floor and worked in the offices were friends, were neighbors, could afford to live next to each other. Can you do that now? All of those people are marginalized, dependent on council housing, dependent on those, but they used to be able to afford the same houses that their grandparents lived in. These are those places whether you’re talking about Sulford or whether you’re talking about Blackburn or any other burer and and authority in these places where you see a generational deprivation and we’re at fault because we’ve moved out and we don’t go we don’t go back. I read my daughter’s uh yearbook, end of year book, and she goes to one of my my top schools, which is the best school in the country, TIGS, and she wrote, “Oh, the question was, where do you want to be in 10 years time?” And the answer was as far away from here as possible. That’s an indictment. People will succeed if they believe and they connect and they have a belonging and they have a value. You can have the best qualifications. Look, the reality is this and I say this all the time to even my staff. Nobody washes a hired car. Too often job opportunities, councils, local authorities, we’re going to build this entire building and we’re going to have jobs and everything else. Let’s be honest, the people who built it carpet packed. They came and took the money and they left. The people on the ground didn’t get the opportunity and then those houses they couldn’t even afford. Nobody nobody washes a hired car. People come and carpet back these places. These places are disadvantaged because people have come and made promises to invest and they have taken rather than given and all this sort of superficial stuff to say, “Yeah, we’ve done some apprenticeships and we’re giving some opportunities.” That’s all superficial. That’s not real. Instill the pride and the value of the people of that community. Give them and empower them and make them believe. Make the parents believe that you’re from Blackpool. There are kids in my school in Blackpool that have not gone to the beach, not been on a train. Take them to the Manchester Science Museum. That young woman, that single parent who says to me, “I’ve bought my child 200 pound trainers and she’s on benefits. Why has she bought that kid 200 pound trainers? Because mom wants the best for the kid and that’s the only way she knows what best is. Show her that taking the the kid on a train to the Manchester Science Museum or the Natural History Museum or to this place and that place will be more beneficial which is best for that child. If a parent doesn’t know what other best they can give the child, the child will only receive what they believe to be the best. And that’s how that future is translated. So my answer to that question, sorry for Gary what’s going on, is the fact that absolutely you can have all the policies in the world but to fundamental the belonging and the value to the place and that community must exist and unless you do that you are just skirting around the edges because those communities are going inward. Thank you. No, I’d say um that resonates heavily with the social connections work at the RSA um and really speaks to the heart of that. I must ask us now to have short answers because we have quite a lot of questions uh coming in online and we would like to take some questions from the room. But I would just like to ask Vicki because we talked about this a little outside. Um a subject close to my heart. We know to sort of change t completely here that people with disabilities are massively over represented in the neat population and I wondered if Vicki you could briefly explain how we could positively encourage more take up and participation in internships work experience and the FE experience more generally in that group. Yeah. Um there was a report out uh earlier this year from um a group called Impetus and and they um they said that I think it’s sort of like 80% of those that are um identified as neat also have special educational needs and disabilities. That’s absolutely unacceptable because they’re already disadvantaged in terms of um lowqualifications, employment opportunities, health issues. So, we’re piling on um disadvantage upon disadvantage upon disadvantage and making them further away from the communities that could offer them a safety net. Um and the number so not only have haves numbers r risen the number of um send uh those with wi with with special educational needs and disabilities has has also risen risen sharply. In 2019 it was um 7.9%. 2022 it was at 12.3%. And we’ve got some localities now where it’s one in five learners and that is significant. Um how on earth do we create an environment um a learning environment that makes for that sense of belonging culture uh and safe safety. Um some of our wonderful general ed um general further education polishes up and down the country actually um put kindness at the heart trying to resolve some of these issues and and change the dial so that we can bring young learners in. um as well as having to be really phenomenal businesses that are connected to health, to policing, to um local authority networks, housing, etc. having those represented in the college. Um so they’re hearing um all of the issues uh because NEAT isn’t a single there isn’t a single solution and and the same is true for special educational needs and disabilities. those but those two things are closely correlated and actually we need to give people an entry point and I I would contend that that’s further education um that is the entry point and a way back into society and community. Um the policy link I think is uh we’ve got in health we’re talking about neighborhoods in education we’re talking about placebased delivery and and locating it so it’s responsive um just need to make sure that health and the education etc also connect in that play space 100%. Thank you. Um I just have one short question for you Jay before we move uh to questions in the room if I may. Um, if you could describe one opportunity that every young person under the age of 18 should have that would prevent them from becoming neat, what do you think that would be? Seeing someone from their background succeed in something that they don’t think they can do. Um, one of the Sorry, I’m very short. Um uh one of the things I noticed between myself in a state school and um the privately educated kids that I met at university was that they talked at length about all of these career fairs that would come into their schools and they would see people and be able to speak to employers that were much like them, much sounded like them. Um and uh that aspect of education just didn’t certainly during the austerity years just was not an option at my state school. So, I did not get the opportunity to see and hear from people that looked and sounded like me um being highf flyers. Uh I was very fortunate in in well, it’s it’s it’s terrible to say, but escaping um uh the poverty that that often plagued um many people in my community. Uh but um that was an exception. Um being able to see kids like yourself doing well. Um and that is that is an intervention that can be made by uh the schools that struggle but by other employers by by uh private schools in the local areas by sharing resource in the community to make sure that they are exposed to alumni who are doing well that sound and work by them. Brilliant. I couldn’t agree more. Thank you. Um we have got time for some questions in the room now please. So my colleague Grizz has a mic. So we’ve got a few hands up here. Can we take a man gentleman just next to you please G his hand up first. Thank you. Thank you. I’m a governor for a special school for young people with moderate learning difficulties. They are not going to be part of the 60% or 75% or whatever the government’s target is for graduates. So they are not going to be unemployed with a lower third in basket weaving. Um the other so the other question is and these are politicians who have gone through they’ve gone to university they’ve got their PPE uh they’ve gone through all the conventions and as some one of the speakers said uh they have they don’t know what it’s like in the other part of the sector. The the second part is picking up on Moe’s comment about entry-level IT jobs and again I um had problems with our broadband and I phoned BT and I got through to a call center in Bombay. Um and again I just wonder whether one way in which we could do it will be if we had government policy which instead of putting um taxes on jobs whether we actually tried to reimpport some of those entrylevel jobs into the UK and maybe put a tax equivalent to national insurance or whatever on the jobs that we outsource. Thank you. We’re going to take a couple and then we’ll come back to them. This lady at the front, please. Thank you. Um hello. Can you hear me? Yeah. Um Dr. Smith, you mentioned in passing people, young people with caring responsibilities, and I’d like to kind of draw that out a bit and say that um young carers in the UK are 32.9% less like more likely to be needs as opposed to 5.3% of the general young person cohort and that about 40% of registered carers, young carers will be um needs for more than 18 months. Apart from the awful awful and excess um unacceptable price paid by those young people, it’s a terrible loss to the um community and what should be done about it. Okay. And we’ll just take one more please from this side of the room. This gentleman at the front here. Thank you. Hi. Um I guess um one of the most pressing questions is um at which point was it decided that um young person meant 16 to 24 um cuz it seems to be changing in terms of like it’s now like 35 depending on where you are depending on what the um the initiative is whether it’s funding for young people or it’s a course for young people the age seems to be moving. Um that’s one thing but also um what’s also kind of not really been spoken about um being that we’re in the Rogue Society of Arts is the creative industries also. So it’s kind of just not been mentioned at all in terms of like what the opportunities are in the creative industries and um and also that in itself speaks to it’s seems to be an afterthought a lot of the time when really it leads innovation, it leads industry, it leads you know the tech industry as you mentioned in terms of creating new ideas, new products. Um somebody’s going to have to design those houses that someone’s going to have to then lay bricks for at some point. Those are also skills that get overlooked in terms of what young people want to maybe aspire to be architects and not just brick layers. There needs to be a more of a a more you know more inclusive conversation in that regard as well. Yeah. Thank you. Could we have short answers please on account of the time? Um Vicki or Yeah, I’ll take if I can take that. It’s a very important question. Okay. Okay. And if you ask me the question that you asked Jade to say what one thing that I would do and in the same vein as the gentleman at the front, we as a company work with those creatives who are at risk of need and make them freelancers and give them the opportunity to actually have a market that they can offer their services to. But here’s the thing. Every government department is talking about digital transformation. Every government department is saying AI is the future. That’s how we’re going to do productivity. Whether it’s the police, whether it’s the NHS, whether So why don’t we do this? Why don’t we create a national tech service at 16? For those young people who are leaving school and have risk, let’s put them in for 2 years on an apprenticeship serving the local authority, the police, the NHS to work as digital natives. Why don’t you use the power they have? And that includes creativity because these young people not only are good with tech just on the technology, they’re good with it with creativity. Look at the content creators and all the sort of Tik Tok. Well, get them to promote that initiative that you’re trying to sell as a public service for 2 years. get them working for the public because what that will do is one it’ll give them a proper understanding of job and a high skill job but a connection to the place. You’ve done something for your place and even at 21 those graduates who don’t get in there give them the same opportunity for two years give them a graduate job in that space with a local public sector organization. They are squandering millions with consultants who are telling them things that are absolute You know the Saudis, I have a business in Saudi. The Saudis have kicked out the top four consultancies because all they’ve done is given them a 200 PowerPoint and charged them a million quid for it. These young people will tell you what to do, how to use AI, how to use creative content to promote that initiative or for that local authority to sell its services to the community. That’s what we should do. a national tech service 16 to 18 with an apprenticeship tied in and then they can go and go wherever they want and at 21 those graduates who don’t get a job or are not succeeding give them a job in that local place with that local public sector organization for two years give them that guarantee trust me they’ll be on their way thank you m um Vicki do you want to come in on the caring responsibilities question yeah absolutely I think there’s there’s something here about um this isn’t just about economics. Uh it’s about wasted potential. It’s about fractured futures. It’s about um just it’s about whole disappointment and um the human cost of exclusion which is not sustainable. And so we need to find ways to help people uh to learn how to learn but to learn in a way that suits the lifestyle and the commitments and the pulls on their time whether that is modular um flexible ways of learning but so we can build incrementally. It’s really important, but I think the crux of it is enabling people to learn how to learn so they can continue to kind of c engaging in their learning throughout. So it doesn’t become peacemeal. It isn’t just a a tick box where I do this and move on. Um the one thing that requires an inspirational teacher who knows their craft as well as their teaching and their pedagogy. Um, society I’d say we need a shift um in communities in society that recognizes and values the jobs that people do in communities over the high paid jobs. Thank you. That brings us to the hour and we must leave it there. So that leaves me to say that we will carry on the conversation here at the RSA. Thank you very much to our wonderful panelists this evening to Mo, to Vicki and to Jade. Thank you very much.