Not for the long term, but for the short term it’s something that should be tolerated and even encouraged for young people still finding their way, after, (or even before), school finishes at 18.
Just over a month ago a good friend of mine said that she had received a letter from the local council stating that if her 17-year-old daughter does not return to sixth form or start another course she may lose her child benefit. When I got home that day, I had the same letter. The letter suggested that our children would be put on the NEET register if something was not done about rectifying the situation, and we could lose our child benefit. But what if you have a child that has had a very negative experience at school for the last 11-12 years and has had enough?
NEET is a term given to young people between the ages of 16 and 24 that are not in full time education, employment or training. It is a term used by the government to analyse the amount of young people that are not contributing to the British economy and is not to be confused with young people taking ‘a gap year’. The term NEET tends to be applied to the lower classes or to young people who do not continue school at 16 or 17 for various (probably personal) reasons and is seen to be a detrimental state which leads to prolonged unemployment. The Gov.uk website states ‘Studies have shown that time spent NEET can have a detrimental effect on physical and mental health, and increase the likelihood of unemployment, low wages, or low quality of work later on in life.’ But what about the young people who have not fitted the academic model of schooling in recent years and just need time to recover from the bruises of a system that never suited them, what about the ones who need to find the time to recover and discover what it is they are good at, re-build their shattered self- esteem and set off from there? These are the ones the educational system unconsciously rejects, the ones they don’t know what to do with and the ones that don’t tick their boxes. They deserve a future too, don’t they?
NEET is a term we need to get rid of, because ‘a gap year’ or ‘a gap six months’ sounds much better. It has a middle-class ring to it that the lower class or lower ability kids who are not university bound do not qualify for, in the same way that they did not qualify for so many things whilst at school. Why are we labelling them again so soon? And making sure that they start their adult lives with a big question mark over them.
Many of our ‘average ability’ kids these days don’t get into their school’s sixth form because they have not acquired the necessary grades to do so, so they scrabble around at 16 looking for what they think is the next best thing. This is the first big rejection for them and it cuts deeply. It comes at a time when they have summoned everything they have in their academic basket to achieve a range of 3 to 5s for their GCSEs. They want to do A Levels because they know that this is what the ‘smart kids’ do, but with their grades it is going to be a very long and high ladder to climb, so they are left with a choice of L2 and 3 Btec courses at FE college which is the poor relation to A Levels and they feel like they’ve failed again. So, they try for a little while, and maybe it suits some and they are successful, but not all of them and many drop out. They say ‘it was rubbish and I never wanted to do it anyway’ and retreat to their rooms to mourn. If you’re 17 and never felt as though you were good enough, why are you going to put all your energy into something you think is second rate from the outset? Now, I’ve taught on these courses and know how much the lecturers put in, but trying to heal the scars of 11 years is a big ask and in many cases it’s not possible. The damage is done.
The time that it takes for a young person to heal after their perceived failures differs from person to person, so the time they need to sit and reflect on their lives and work out a coherent plan for the future is also going to differ. Is this time NEET or is it the natural amount of time that almost everyone needs to decide what they want to do? I used to tell my students on a daily basis that I was 52 and still had not made up my mind what I wanted to do with my life, at which they laughed at and replied ‘but miss, you’re a teacher!’ The thing was, most of the time I really meant it. I can’t remember why I wanted to be a teacher and at that stage in my career I used to wonder on a daily basis why I was still a teacher. I was 52. Why are we expecting everyone to know exactly what they want to do by the age of 17?
Even those that are academically successful and pushed into choosing 6 universities and filling in their UCAS form at 17 are not completely sure. I spent years ‘helping’ young people choose courses to apply for and write their personal statements so that they would be accepted into their first-choice university. I did it because I believed that they deserved to get the same opportunities as their private school counterparts out of a drive for social justice so that they would be able to compete for the best jobs when they’d finished. I even went so far as to encourage one of my best academic students to strive to become prime minister one day. I now wonder how many of them made it through the first year and whether they have £60000 worth of debt instead of a great career. We don’t encourage young people to take the time to reflect before they go off to university and really get their money’s worth, doing what they enjoy and what will lead them on to a career in the area they are passionate about. No, of course we don’t – they might end up NEET mightn’t they? It is the more affluent young people that take a year out to do an internship or go travelling and ‘find themselves’, the local kids from the council estates or the lower ability will be NEET and we can’t allow that. The Independent ran an article in 2016 which stated ‘Almost a third of first-year students have either already dropped out of university or are thinking of leaving in the summer’ which suggests that we are pushing them into something they are not prepared for and landing them with a £15000 debt into the bargain. This is money they have paid and got nothing out of, and will be added to the new course they start when they do eventually find the degree that they want to do.
I’m not suggesting that any young person should be NEET for long, but give them the chance to take a breath or time to heal from the battering and bruising experience they’ve had at school, and take away the label – being NEET is not something anyone should have to put on their CV.