Understanding and Reducing NEET: Perspectives of Schoolteachers and Career Advice Service Providers
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Career Guidance and Information Services
1.2. Research Questions
- (1)
- How do schoolteachers describe existing careers provision and NEET referral processes in their schools?
- (2)
- How do career advice service providers describe existing NEET referral processes and efforts to support pupils’ transition to post-sixteen education, training, or employment?
2. Method
2.1. Design
2.2. Sample and Procedure
2.3. Interview Schedule
2.4. Data Analysis
3. Analysis and Discussion
3.1. Experiences of Schoolteachers
3.1.1. Pupil Contact and Support
“What students say to me and kind of parents as well, is that that one-to-one conversation is a lot more effective…it takes them (pupils) out of that environment as well, where they’ve got their friends around them where you know they might not necessarily feel comfortable asking questions…and it’s very much bespoke to them and their situation rather than being more generic.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“(Pupils at risk of NEET) …are likely to be the ones that are late…because of poor attendance…quite often can be the case with those groups of students, they miss that and that’s it.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“The biggest challenge with the one-to-one is…we have that discussion, I will write up their notes, I will send them to them, with their permission, I will send them to other colleagues and I might send them to parents, but there is no space or structured time for them to go and complete the objectives and actions that we have come out with from that discussion.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“…it is very much left to the student to take up those actions…it becomes an isolated event…when we meet students one year later, (they are) exactly where they were when we last met.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“…although efforts were made to continue offering careers support sessions (online), these were often not taken up and pupils did not reach out...we didn’t have 100% coverage of every single student…it meant that so much was missed”(Participant A–Teacher)
“We offer virtual work experience that has been quite successful…(it) has proved popular and interestingly quite popular among students who were persistent absentees… (it was) seen as a non-threatening way to engage in the world of work”(Participant B–Teacher)
3.1.2. A Whole-School Approach to Careers Guidance
“…a general lack of understanding (of the role, thinking that)…one careers interview will fix it.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“…the job description is…not reflected in day-to-day understanding…I can’t possibly do that within the time that I have.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“I don’t act in isolation…my conversations with the attendance team, pastoral leads, teachers.”(Participant B–Teacher)
“(There is) a lack of understanding from general teaching staff on what is the careers’ role and what does that one-to-one appointment do, and what should they (other teachers) be doing alongside it because they should be supporting careers development as well.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“A member of staff might have asked me to pick them (a referred student) up as a priority but then I don’t get given any (profile) information…that would have been extremely important and changes the dynamic”(of interviews with pupils) (Participant A–Teacher)
“I am asking heads of year, form tutors, pastoral leads, etc., to identify those pupils who are potentially NEET.”(Participant B–Teacher)
“(teachers work together to)…increased awareness of careers and how this relates to subject areas…if you’re teaching geography, you need to demonstrate how geography is used in particular careers…this is made explicit.”(Participant B–Teacher)
3.1.3. Broadening Horizons and Creating Opportunities
“Our demographic of pupils haven’t necessarily got parents at home that are in the top jobs that will help and support them and everything else, they are kind of your more disadvantaged, working class roles, if they are working, and this does mean their aspirations can be quite low because they are not exposed to those higher levels of even just the kind of standard aspirations, sometimes, which is sad…because we only think of careers we are exposed to.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“Work experience helps…it gives them this opportunity to kind of test this career idea…being able to do work experience allows them to give it a bit of a trial before they commit to a college course or some other training or education.”(Participant A–Teacher)
It is: “Useful to talk to someone in that industry.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“…students should be doing experiences of the workplace, and that does normally take the form of a block of work experience in year 10…although we’ve dropped it down from a two-week to a one-week option.” And “if you then go on that experience and you don’t particularly enjoy it, you are back to square one.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“for some students it ends up being ‘well I’ve tried, people haven’t got back to me, so I’m just going to work with mum and dad, or auntie and uncle’ because that’s the only thing they can get to fill that time…this hasn’t tested their career idea in any way, shape or form.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“A real problem with regards to ambition and aspiration is that most of the jobs in the areas are low skilled.”(Participant B–Teacher)
3.1.4. NEET Identification and Referral: When, How, and What Happens Next?
“(We) Do not really have a formal system within school.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“…because you have seen these students day in day out for five years, you almost get a sense of that (being at risk of NEET)…and where they are heading.”(Participant B–Teacher)
“(We adopt)…A holistic approach…one of the things I have been looking at is postcode data…we are trying to look at students who, right from the outset, come in pupil premium, free school meals, and a Quintile 1 area, and if you add to that they are a looked after child, you know that potentially you’ve got a NEET student on your hands…I am [also] asking heads of year, form tutors, pastoral leads etc. to identify those pupils who are potentially NEET and to focus on them for careers interviews.”(Participant B–Teacher)
“(I was)…Not overly impressed with the form…(it is)…a very basic form, name, address, date of birth, the basic information to identify the right student, then there is kind of like a notes section about what you’ve done…before the MS forms when I did it through the email process, I used to attach any careers notes that I’d had with them but there isn’t necessarily that capacity to do that with the MS forms.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“Having not had the full information, whether that’s me or (the provider)…can get really tricky.”(Participant A–Teacher)
“Once it goes to (the provider) you don’t really hear very much thereafter…it’s lost…particularly when it comes to tracking students after 3 years, you don’t really have a hope.”(Participant B–teacher)
3.2. Experiences of Career Advice Service Providers
3.2.1. Navigating a Dynamic Landscape
“There’s been a lot of changes in the way the career service works…there’s been obviously a reduction in funding (and) a lot of redundancies. Whereas we used to be funded to have advisors in all schools…it’s now down to individual schools to provide that impartial guidance in whatever way they individually decide…it’s created a very piecemeal situation…some of them buy in our service, some of them have their own people, but it does mean…the system does not work as well as it used to.”(Participant C–Service Provider)
“…I used to work really closely with the school…they would identify those at risk of NEET and then you would meet them…you would think okay these (are the) ones I need to make sure to follow up with…it was almost like a seamless link. And then obviously things changed, and you know, lack of funding…(now) we just don’t have those links with schools.”(Participant D–Service Provider)
“…it always seems to me that the work we (now) do in school, and the work we do with NEET is just two separate things really…don’t seem to be joined up in any way…no link between them.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
“If they (at risk of NEET pupils) don’t want to be in the sixth form college it’s fairly limited what’s on offer…a lot of them aspire to apprenticeships, but…the supplies are wiped by demands.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
“One of the barriers…(those at risk of NEET) understand very little about the labour market and what it’s like (and) don’t really realize how tricky it is…(especially) without really having much to offer in terms of qualifications and experience.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
“There’s so many that I talked to and parents as well, who actually think that it’s quite easy still (to get a job)…a lack of awareness of just how difficult the labour market has become.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
“A disproportionate number of NEET seem to have mental health issues…they won’t leave the house…there is no discrete provision to deal with that.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
“the nature of NEETs has changed…the numbers are lower…but the ones that are on it are so much more complex, the barrier, there’s multiple barriers, huge barriers…they take a lot more work and a different kind of work…barriers based.”(Participant C–Service Provider)
“…the ones that we had always found really hard to reach and help because their mental health was such that they could not come out of the house to an appointment or wouldn’t, the pandemic has actually had a really good side in and helped us to become more creative and flexible…and actually we are realising we can help all these ones if we offer them a choice.”(Participant C–Service Provider)
“I find them very accepting of it all really and I think for some they actually saw it as a positive.”(Participant D–Service Provider)
3.2.2. Integration and Affiliation with Schools
“it’s (the form) sort of what you might call dry information or factual information rather than what they aspire to or what they are good at…I suppose it is quite negative information rather than positive.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
“…talking about the Year 11 at risk of NEET…we get a list…it comes too late…usually done in a rush.”(Participant C–Service Provider)
“…sometimes in school they’ll refer someone to you, and they’ll actually say we’re a bit worried about this person because of X, Y and Z, it could be the issues at home, or it could be that they suddenly stopped taking an interest in school when they were interested before.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
“…the parent…and you’ll get it from the young person as well is how let down they feel by the education system by the school and that they’ve been blamed rather than supported by it.”(Participant C–Service Provider)
“… you do get some where the parents are genuinely amazed that someone’s taking an interest…and sometimes having somebody who isn’t part of the school somebody from outside talking to them can help.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
“I don’t think people have probably asked them that before…you’ll get the parents’ perspective, and so I think almost sometimes it’s the first time they’ve been able to sort of really offload yeah.”(Participant D–Service Provider)
3.2.3. Reaching Pupils at Risk of NEET
“What tends to happen…is that they get moved about from pillar to post…they’ll say well you know in couple months’ time, I may not even be living here…and they don’t seem to get much notice…every time they move from one area to another, someone else is assigned to them…there’s no consistency.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
“It is quite hard to get hold of these (NEET) people…quite often the number we get is a parent’s number…I joke that you tend to speak more to the parents of NEETs than NEETs…sometimes you go months and months and only talk to their parents…sometimes you feel that the parents are almost shielding them…that they don’t want you to talk to them…as they see you as some authority.”(Participant E–Service Provider)
4. General Discussion
4.1. Limitations and Future Directions
4.2. Conclusions and Recommendations
- Clarify and simplify NEET referral procedures.
- Introduce risk assessment and screening for specific service needs.
- Offer personalised services that continue over time.
- Support continued participation in education among the most vulnerable groups.
- Link curriculum learning to careers with increased collaboration between teachers and subjects within schools.
- Undertake work to assess skills needs locally through collaboration with large employers and other council departments.
- Initiate a mentoring scheme, connecting employers to students and invite career talks in schools where different professionals describe their tasks and responsibilities of a normal working day, offering role models to students.
- Collaborate with service providers including teachers from different schools, FE colleges, training providers, career providers staff, social workers, (mental) health services, housing services, police, and probation officers, to develop a strategy for an integrated service delivery.
- Consider sourcing funding for a specialist role (sometimes called a careers coach) to support NEET young people who face the greatest challenges and barriers to securing and sustaining EET. This offer can include initial intensive support and a tailored response that also addresses wider factors that impede progress such as mental health problems.
- Develop online provision that is complementary to standard service delivery. This should include clear signposting, information, and advice alongside the development of specific resources to address the varied needs of young people (including career guidance, skill training, opportunities for work experience as well as mental health services, family planning, housing provision, and other relevant services).
- Schools and councils working together––learning, looking forward, and co-building of resource structures for young people.
Supplementary Materials
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A. Interview Schedule (Schoolteachers)
Appendix B. Interview Schedule (Career Advice Service Providers)
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Superordinate Themes | Subordinate Themes |
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Pupil Contact and Support |
|
A Whole-School Approach to Careers Guidance |
|
Broadening Horizons and Creating Opportunities |
|
NEET Identification and Referral: When, How, and What Happens Next? |
|
Superordinate Themes | Subordinate Themes |
---|---|
Navigating a Dynamic Landscape |
|
Integration and Affiliation with Schools |
|
Reaching Pupils at Risk of NEET |
|
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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Share and Cite
Holliman, A.; Schoon, I.; Hurry, J.; Waldeck, D. Understanding and Reducing NEET: Perspectives of Schoolteachers and Career Advice Service Providers. Youth 2023, 3, 579-595. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth3020039
Holliman A, Schoon I, Hurry J, Waldeck D. Understanding and Reducing NEET: Perspectives of Schoolteachers and Career Advice Service Providers. Youth. 2023; 3(2):579-595. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth3020039
Chicago/Turabian StyleHolliman, Andrew, Ingrid Schoon, Jane Hurry, and Daniel Waldeck. 2023. "Understanding and Reducing NEET: Perspectives of Schoolteachers and Career Advice Service Providers" Youth 3, no. 2: 579-595. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth3020039