What is the Youth Guarantee scheme – and is it working?published at 11:18 BST
11:18 BST
Kate McGough, education reporter & Emer Moreau, business reporter
The government has already taken steps to tackle the Neet crisis.
In 2024, it launched the Youth Guarantee scheme, which is a commitment to ensure that every 18 to 21-year-old in England gets access to education, training, or help to find a job or an apprenticeship.
There are a number of parts to the Guarantee, including incentives to employers to take on young people, and short, fully-funded training courses in specific sectors like construction and hospitality.
Another part is the Jobs Guarantee which aims to help long-term unemployed young people by providing six months of paid work to eligible 18 to 24-year-olds who have been receiving Universal Credit for 18 months without earning or learning.This is intended to create employment for 90,000 young people over three years.
Eight areas in England are part of a trial for the Youth Guarantee trailblazer scheme, which was created to test local ways of reaching vulnerable young people who were out of work and education.
But the mayor of the West of England, one of the trial areas, said the initial results were “not good enough” after it reached only 300 people so far.
“There’s some really good stories, there’s some really good outcomes, but I would like to see a much bigger impact,” Helen Godwin said.