Supporting NEET Young People into work 

ERSA and the Education Development Trust are undertaking a research project about young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET), with a particular emphasis on care experienced young people.

Currently, 12.6% of people aged 18 to 24 are NEET, which amounts of around 675,000 people. Perhaps even more worryingly, the rate has only decreased 2.2 percentage points since the data started being collected in 2002.

For care leavers, the numbers are more concerning with 41% of 19 to 21 year olds not in education, employment and/or training. This combined with their increased likelihood to be involved with the criminal justice system, live in insecure housing/homelessness and have lower levels of mental wellbeing makes them one of the most disadvantaged groups in society.

In this project, we’re particularly keen to find out how the employment support sector helps care leavers on their employment journey and which of these practices work best.

We’re asking ERSA members and the wider employability sector to spend around 15 minutes on a survey how they support young people on their programmes into education, employment and/or training.

The deadline for the survey is Tuesday 28 February at 5pm and it can be accessed here.

In the survey you can choose to remain anonymous or provide your organisation’s name, whichever you prefer. The data will only be seen by the two researchers named below, stored securely and deleted after project completion. All data will be presented as aggregated, anonymised data in the final report so you won’t be identifiable.

• Henry Foulkes, Policy and Public Affairs Lead, ERSA 
• Dr Madeleine Winnard, Education Development Trust 

We hope the findings will contribute to ensuring the evidence base is robust so that sound recommendations to help NEET young people can be generated – all responses are greatly appreciated!

If you have any questions relating to the survey you can contact policy@ersa.org.uk and mwinnard@edt.org.