Tackling the NEET Crisis

Posted on June 30, 2026 by Athene Donald

We hear a lot about NEET’s (those not in Education, Employment or Training); they are a major source of concern and form the focus of the recent Milburn Review. His recent, if interim report, has dug down into the characteristics of those who become NEET. They are certainly not a homogeneous group, but there are some key pointers early on in their school life that highlight those at most risk of leaving school disengaged and without substantive qualifications. Whether a new Government will change policies, for instance around FE, to attempt to staunch the growth in the NEET population, remains to be seen. It is an area Andy Burnham has previously shown he cares greatly about. What Milburn says in his final report will no doubt influence this significantly too, but Burnham has already said he takes the (interim) Review very seriously.

Those for whom school has not ‘worked’, who leave without qualifications, may have been let down by many different parts of the system, but it by no means necessarily implies they have no inherent skills or potential yet to be uncovered. Reading Francis Spufford’s 2004 book, Backroom Boys: The secret return of the British boffin, is a salutary reminder that leaving school with no fixed destination in mind may just mean the loss of untapped talent.

One chapter in the book is devoted to the story behind sequencing the genome. As this work under John Sulston at Wellcome’s Hinxton Hall campus expanded rapidly in 1998, in the face of the private enterprise of Craig Ventner entering the sphere as a ‘competitor’, there was a great and sudden need for more technical pairs of hands. Sulston took a radical approach:

‘We decided we would hire outside the box. We decided we would not hire in the conventional sense.’

Spufford goes on to describe what that meant in practice.

‘They advertised in the Cambridge Evening News, not in Nature. They hired lots of people with doctorates and lots of people with biology degrees, but lots more people who had just left school with minimal GCSEs or who were returning to the workforce after twenty years of child-rearing.’

They were looking for applicants who were careful, whether or not they had paper qualifications. As a consequence of this radical approach

‘In no time at all, we had people asking if they could take day release or do evening classes’…’Maybe they’d dropped out of school, and now they realised they did like science, and they really did want to be part of the larger picture, because now they were doing something practical.’

It is hard to know how many students are indeed put off science today because of (at least at secondary school) the heavy emphasis on textbook learning, with ‘practical’ work limited to teacher demonstrations or YouTube videos. The 2023 report on the Science Education Tracker showed just how significantly this is having an impact on teenagers’ interest in science. The report stated:

‘Practical work was considered the most motivating aspect of science lessons at school, especially for students in years 7–9…However, access to hands–on or teacher–demonstrated practical work2 becomes less common as students progress through school. In year 7, 65% reported doing this at least once a fortnight, but this percentage fell steadily by school year, such that only 39% reported similar frequency of interactive practicals in year 11.’

It has to be hoped the revision of the school curriculum consequent on last autumn’s Francis Report (Curriculum and Assessment Review) facilitates the much greater component of practical work at key stages 3 and 4 that it recommends.

As Burnham said in this week’s key Manchester speech, the education system needs to work for those for whom university is not the right route, just as much as for those for whom it is. Over the issue of the unsuccessful bid to introduce an MBacc (Manchester Baccalaureate) with an element of technical training included, he has expressed his frustration with the Department for Education, for whom a local qualification was not acceptable. In the same vein, this week’s speech stressed how he and his team in Manchester had worked with local employers to ensure every local T Level student got the requisite 45 day placement. In order to facilitate more technical education via the T Level route, this will need to be replicated across the country. No mean feat when placements are one of the major hurdles as regards increasing T Level numbers (see my blogpost on this from a couple of years ago). Currently fewer than 30,000 students are studying for T Levels across the country.

But T Level students have already committed to staying on at school or college. They aren’t the NEETs, of whom there are too many. Would they be attracted by being able to do something with their hands that didn’t require paper qualifications in the early years of secondary school? Can the system be changed to facilitate that? As Spufford says of Sulston’s Hinxton Hall experiment:

‘It was quite possible to answer an advert in the Cambridge Evening News, arrive at the Sanger to push a trolley and to emerge a few years later with a biology degree.’

As the Department for Education ramps up its R+D efforts, tries out some Test and Learn pilots, maybe here is a model that could be facilitated around the country, to take those whom school has failed to provide the nucleus of a new generation of technicians we so badly need.

The technical workforce we have in this country is ageing, numerically insufficient and in some cases lacking the skills needed in the modern workplace. This is not just about those who look after large, sophisticated bits of kit – for which a PhD may be required – but those who are involved at a much more modest level, perhaps doing fairly repetitive work, such as was required on the genome project at Hinxton. Such work can still bring its own reward: knowing you are part of a team or contributing to your community and wider society. For instance, to become a phlebotomist in the NHS, a 1-day course is advertised requiring no formal qualifications, although some course providers ask for 2 GCSEs. Having my blood tested annually for various potential problems as a senior citizen, I know what a vital role that is. A recent report produced in association with the Gatsby Foundation (David Sainsbury has a keen interest in technical skills) highlighted the need to (amongst other things) raise awareness of technician careers early and widely; close gender gaps through outreach and support; and simplify qualification routes and strengthen T-Level and Higher Technical Qualification (HTQ) uptake.

Bringing down the number of NEETs is something the new Government will need to tackle, with all the advice from the Milburn review and the experience of Manchester that Burnham seems set to bring. If more of them can be facilitated to enter the technical workforce, via T Levels or straight in after an unhappy period at school, it will benefit the individuals, the science base and the economy.

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A Man of the People?

Posted on June 21, 2026 by Athene Donald

In the run-up to the recent Makerfield by-election, I saw comments to the effect that Andy Burnham couldn’t be the ‘man of the people’ he claimed to be, because he had been educated at Fitzwilliam College in Cambridge. A remark like that implies that all the outreach work the University and all its constituent colleges do is pointless. That whether you came from a millionaire’s family and went to Eton, or were in care from an early age, coming from a dysfunctional family and going to the local comprehensive, you are equally a toff as soon as you set foot through an Oxbridge door. It is, of course, nonsense.

The role of any college is to give those whom they admit the best opportunity to achieve their potential. Those who came from Eton have many advantages that the comprehensive kid lacks (even knowing which cutlery to use for which course at formal dinners can be a strain for the latter; the former may not even notice it could be a challenge). An undergraduate in Oxbridge does not lose their background because they have entered a new world. There are of course many kids who go to Cambridge who carry with them a great deal of entitlement, which they then take on with them into later life. In Oxford, MPs from the Bullingdon Club seem to exemplify this issue. But that doesn’t mean you can write off every individual who went to Fitzwilliam or any of the other 30 Cambridge Colleges. That is merely simplistic, media laziness to promote such an attitude.

Do those people who automatically scoff at those who went to Oxbridge regardless of their background, have a pecking order of which universities allow you still to claim you have a disadvantaged background? Does UCL sit above or below this line? What about St Andrews? Fiona Hill, currently Chancellor of Durham University, is an interesting example of an alumna from this ancient Scottish University. She has written movingly about it in her 2021 book There is Nothing for you here: finding opportunity in the 21st century. She went to St Andrews University from a disadvantaged family background in a run-down former mining village outside Bishop Auckland, to a place where she said she felt very out of her depth. Of her background she said

‘Having aspirations wasn’t normal – or perhaps it just seemed pointless when you were unlikely to escape poverty or ever leave County Durham.’

As she put it, when she arrived she was surrounded by hordes of students who seemed to know what they were doing.

‘They were coasting along. They seemed to know everything. They exuded confidence. I was filled with self-doubt every time they spoke in class. They knew things I didn’t even know I should know. They sounded intelligent. I sounded hesitant.’

She did not have an easy time at St Andrews. In one case, a much posher student (who had attended the private and expensive Cheltenham Ladies College, no doubt another place which encourages a sense of entitlement) accused her of unfair tactics to get a good mark:

‘Did you sleep with [the tutor]? How could you have done so well? You’re just a common northerner.’

As this shows, bias comes in many forms, and it’s usually unpleasant. It is hard to imagine that any of Hill’s contemporaries went on to have more successful careers than she herself achieved: she became an official at the U.S. National Security Council when she was a presidential advisor to Donald Trump in his first term, specializing in Russian and European affairs. This same excelling over his contemporaries is likely to be true of Andy Burnham at Fitzwilliam, although it seems unlikely anyone accused him of sleeping with his tutor in order to get on, given common attitudes to double standards between men and women.

Too often, people want to put other people in boxes. It’s just another form of stereotyping, but like all such it is lazy and based on simplistic assumptions. A ‘common northerner’ could not be imagined by some to be competent in Hill’s case. For Burnham, that he studied at Cambridge eradicates his Liverpool roots. I know nothing about his upbringing, but he certainly – as Manchester Mayor – has made it clear he does not only represent the so-called metro-elite, even if inevitably he is seen as now belonging to it.

As I write, the likelihood of Burnham becoming Prime Minister shortly seems to be rising fast. Given my own interests and activities around education and skills, I will be watching with interest to see whether nationally he expresses as much interest in FE as he has within Manchester. Will this be done with actual funding or just warm words? What difference will it make to Alan Milburn’s recommendations around NEETs? Although they did not overlap in the Cabinet, they certainly overlapped as MPs. Time will tell how much control he might give to devolved regions to sort out their education system to fit the local economy, as he had wanted to do when he talked about an MBacc, wanting to create a qualification that he felt would serve local needs more than the national (and now out-dated) EBacc.

We need diversity in perspectives in Government as everywhere else. It is important that not all judges or MPs, for instance, have identical backgrounds, and I’m not denying that an Oxbridge education is typically a good one and is likely to convey advantages on their graduates, sometimes simply because employers take an Oxbridge degree as a crude form of credentialing. But one’s roots matter too, roots in terms of geography as well as ‘class’ or financial circumstances. All of these factors will impact on perspectives and need to be recognized as separate aspects of an individual. We live, as they say, in interesting times but please, media folk, can we avoid lazy stereotyping!

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Victims and Perpetrators

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Athene Donald

Some readers may have noticed in the media, recent (separate) reports that two Fellows of Kings College, Cambridge, have resigned/been stripped of their fellowship due to allegations of harassment and misconduct.  I haven’t seen any particular details about the accusations, and that isn’t really the point of what follows. Both the men concerned are ones with whom I’ve crossed paths, although they are not ones who’ve ever given me, personally, any trouble. I did know one of them had a reputation for ‘wandering hands’. However, when I think back to the not so-distant past, there are several men in my University whose behaviour I fear has strayed beyond the professional, in ways I find extraordinary at my ripe old age. It indicates that harassment of different kinds is still flourishing here, and no doubt in most universities up and down the country.

More than ten years ago I described one particular unsavoury individual. The fact was he was extremely senior, and the powers-that-be did not want to admit he was a serial harasser, as he undoubtedly was. And was well-known to be. He is someone who said to me at a reception for the University in one of the royal palaces that he ‘did like kissing games’ and prepared to act it out, despite me attempting to retreat as fast as I could. It was not the venue to create a scene. Perhaps even more surprising was his choice to drape himself all over me at a dinner with the VC sitting across from us. She did nothing. Have I mentioned I believe such inaction amounts to being complicit before? Although that previous post about being complicit was more concerned with observing bullying than harassment, the same comment applies. Inaction in the face of someone else being demeaned, bullied, harassed or attacked by any means other than pure scholarly argument, is a failure on the part of the observer.

The man I am describing in the last paragraph held a particularly exalted position within the University. His successor in that role, I’m afraid, I’ve also had cause to complain about. This was brought back to mind when, loading a talk onto a USB stick recently, I found a copy of the letter I wrote to him. In fact, I’d handwritten the letter and scanned it for a record as a pdf, carefully not keeping it on my laptop (always uploaded to the Cloud). I wanted to highlight his bad behaviour, but without advertising this more broadly by allowing others to access it. In due course I got a (handwritten) response, with something of an apology included. So far, so good. Did it change his behaviour – again my complaint was of him draping himself around me inappropriately and publicly? Who knows. What is it about that particular role and that academic discipline that lets the influential leaders believe such behaviour is acceptable?

In both cases these were men in powerful positions, who no doubt held the fate of many of their junior colleagues in their hands. This is what really troubles me. If you are a young researcher (typically the victim will be female), and a man in authority chooses to behave inappropriately, what are you supposed to do? Slap him and tell him not to be so silly? That is something I have never yet managed to have the nerve to do, but another female professor told me this was how she treated the first perpetrator I mention. Good for her, but it didn’t change his behaviour in general and it’s not something a twenty-something academic will do (let alone an undergraduate).

Furthermore, to go back to the two recent examples which hit the news that I mentioned in the opening paragraph, knowing that someone has a reputation of ‘wandering hands’ is insufficient to act. It’s simply hearsay. As a young academic I did once act in that way. I went to the then head of department and said I’d been told a professor in the department did such things as get his secretary to sit on his knee so he could fondle her. Said head of department was sufficiently shocked he immediately went and dressed down the professor and told him if he ever did that again he’d be sacked. None of that would be permissible these days. I had no direct evidence myself, it was all hearsay, and no enquiry was ever instigated by HR. However, it was probably an effective way to deal with wandering-hands-syndrome and one we have lost in the general tightening up of HR policies.

In the cases of the two Kings Fellows, they were both at the end of their careers, one had long been retired before this all hit the news (and I don’t know what had finally tipped the balance to this coming out into the public). One has to assume they had been ‘misbehaving’ throughout their careers. People might say, as they did to me when I publicly complained about one of the perpetrators I suffered at the hands of, ‘it was all different then’. It was of course. Back in the days when I was Master of Churchill College, another head of house admitted that when she’d been an undergraduate, one of her supervisors had done things that these days would be utterly unacceptable without any shame, and she had not thought anything of it then and would never have wanted to complain.

But, power imbalances mean that someone can be both flattered by such behaviour from a senior academic, and that it can be totally traumatic and remain as a shadow in the mind of the undergraduate permanently. I’ve heard moving accounts of long-ago undergraduates who experienced shocking behaviour from those in authority, including a (consensual) affair, which they only felt able to disclose after the death of the perpetrator. One woman wrote to me about her experiences at the hands of a lately deceased male academic and said it was ‘cathartic’ to talk about this decades on.

So, maybe it was different then, but it doesn’t alter the fact that any woman encountering such behaviour now is still placed in the quandary: what do I do? Is complaining ‘worth it’? There are plenty of accounts in the media of people who have complained and their institutions have not been able to handle the complaints in ways that don’t make the complainant feel worse, put through a long-running purgatory of an investigation which may end up going nowhere; with the victim wretched and the perpetrator allowed to continue in their professional role. The only potential protection is for others to tackle the bad behaviour when seen – and so often it will not be. Academia is only worse than other sectors because the power imbalances are more significant. One has to hope that the women (I’m assuming in the plural) who suffered at the hands of the two Kings Fellows, feel some sense of closure with the loss of the fellowships they both have now suffered. I fear it is too little too late.

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Work Experience

Posted on May 31, 2026 by Athene Donald

Alan Milburn’s interim diagnostic report, Young People and Work, looking into the causes of the substantial increase in NEETs (18-24 year olds Not in Education, Employment or Training), makes sober reading. The causes are many, across multiple Government departments and national and local organisations, and Milburn identifies the overarching problem as a lack of system’s thinking: lots of individuals and bodies attempting to do good stuff, but insufficiently joined up with other good folk elsewhere. As he puts it

‘There is no system in Britain that takes young people from education into work as adults. There are institutions, programmes and many good intentions. But there is no actual system’.

We will have to wait a few more months to see the final report and recommendations, but the shape of what he wants to see develop is probably well articulated in those few lines.

Much has been written about what he has uncovered during his investigations and interviews. It should be a wake-up call, as many commentators have noted, if the number of NEETS – and therefore the cost both to the individual and society – is not simply to go on rising. This is not a case of a snowflake generation, or an aftermath of the pandemic, the problems sit well beyond such factors impacting at the individual level, due to the systemic vacuum.

One of the complaints often made is that young people are not ‘work-ready’. It makes me wonder how former generations ever learned those skills implied. Work experience wasn’t a ‘thing’ when I was at school, and certainly it was never suggested I had a Saturday job or a paper round, although presumably such would have been available. However, applying for jobs was undoubtedly much more straightforward, with far less formality through forms, psychological testing and/or assessment centres. When I look back to the first job I had, it was such an unremarkable affair I have no record of either applying or being offered it in my teenage diary.

My memory is that I saw an advertisement in a strange publication called The Lady (which still exists) for essentially a temporary, live-in kitchen skivvy over the summer. I can only imagine I sent in a letter and got the job, although none of this made it into my diary (although earlier in the year I did note that my family thought it unlikely I’d manage to get myself a job, so it must have been discussed). At just 16, though, I did note I ‘went and got myself an insurance card’ – who told me how to do it, I’ve no idea, (I’m not sure my mother would ever have had one by this point, as she didn’t have a job), but the local DHSS equivalent was housed in a sort of Portakabin not too far away and I must just have strolled in.

So, I got myself a job working at the Field Studies Centre at Flatford Mill (it’s still there) in Suffolk, John Constable’s old home, a fascinating building surrounded by locations that he painted and that I was able to explore. I was thrown in at the deep end, having arrived late one afternoon. The next day my diary tells me ‘Got up at 6.55 to start work at 7’ – that seems very casual, not how I might have imagined I’d deal with my first day on the job, but my bedroom was straight above the kitchen, so travel was not an issue. ‘First peeled potatoes in an electric machine.’ This was simply a tub that whizzed around with a rough surface to take the top layer off. Stop concentrating and leave them too long there and there wasn’t much potato left; that certainly occurred sometimes on my watch. I continue:

‘7.45 have breakfast and then rush through washing up students’ breakfast. Then sweep refectory [sic], polish tables, wash tea towels, sweep and wash pantry, wash up oddments etc. All very hard work right through till 1.’

I don’t record any views on all of this, but it must have been a real shock to the system. I hadn’t been particularly domestic at home, and I’m sure I’d never used a washboard, which was all I was given to wash the tea towels. And so it goes on. The last remark about that first day was ‘I expect I will enjoy myself’, although I suspect this was as much because I was looking forward to being independent, away from home for the first time, and getting out into the rather lovely surrounding countryside. Now, were such a job still to exist, no doubt there would be large numbers of applicants, people in their gap year, or indeed a NEET, almost all able to demonstrate some prior ability around domesticity. The problem of living away from home, so often a limiting factor for young people today seeking work, wasn’t an issue for me, since board and lodging were included, even if it was fairly basic.

Although the afternoons of the job were free for me, as the students were out doing their fieldwork, I did have to come back on duty late afternoon around the students’ supper, and sometimes I also had to do end-of-day ‘tea duty’. Here is another example of how unfit I was for this role. Tea duty consisted of putting on a large boiler to heat up water for the tea, and I clearly got this wrong on multiple occasions: not enough water, forgetting to turn it on, even forgetting to plug it in. I note wryly

‘if I’d been going to be here more than a month, they’d probably sack me’.

That last sentence probably highlights the problem for many people in their first job. Being overwhelmed leads to forgetfulness, leading to apparent incompetence. I didn’t get sacked – which would have left them short-staffed in the kitchen – and I hope I got more reliable by the end of the month I was there. The other thing I learned – still a key lesson and part of being ‘work ready’ – was that you were expected to turn up, regardless of circumstances. I was prone to regular migraines at this point, and they were incredibly painful and wretched (in the days before I found effective medication, which at least now ameliorates them), requiring an extended period in a darkened room. But I remember being chased out of my room to come and do my evening shift; shirking my duty was not acceptable, another lesson those who are now deemed ‘not work-ready’ may not get a second chance to learn.

Thinking back to this first foray into the workforce, I do think how lucky I was, how much easier it was for me than those too often termed ‘snowflakes’. I applied for one job, I got it, without anything more than a letter in response to an advertisement, with no real assessment of my abilities (a good slew of O Levels hardly counted, since they would have been utterly irrelevant for sweeping the floor), or even needing to produce a reference. Just as well, as a letter from my Physics teacher would hardly have helped either. Having got the job, despite being somewhat flakey, no one tried to get rid of me after a couple of weeks.

How different for those starting out today. Read the statistics in the Milburn Review, or tales from the NEETs of today, who struggle to get past the first stage in any job application, who can’t afford to travel to an interview, or there is no public transport to allow them to take on shift work….it is tough for those who have little support, financial or moral. I look forward to reading the second part of the report when suggestions for how to turn the situation around for the young are put forward. As a country, we cannot afford (morally or financially) to let so many people down.

 

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