How early screening reduces Neets

Project Screening for young people not in education, training or employment (Neet)

Funding Development of the screening process cost around £20,000 in staff time

Purpose To prevent young people ending up as Neet by identifying those at risk early

Background Young people who do not go into education, training and employment when they leave school are more likely to have health problems, take drugs, get involved in crime and become teenage parents.

Sandwell Council has developed a screening programme designed to identify those at risk of dropping out of education or employment after school and offers targeted support to the most vulnerable.

“We often intervene when young people are already Neet at 16 or 17, but we wanted to see if we could prevent them becoming Neet through early intervention,” explains Chris Arnold, educational psychologist at the council’s inclusion support team.

Action “There isn’t one single factor that leads to young people being disengaged at 16, there are a complexity of factors related to children with often quite chaotic lives,” Arnold says.

He worked with a Connexions personal adviser to identify potential local risk factors and tested those on existing data.

The top three risks in Sandwell were families with accommodation problems; children with low motivation; and those with behavioural problems. They then screened year 9 pupils at a test high school. Pupils were categorised as high, medium, low or very low risk, with medium and high risk students tracked and offered extra support.

A key finding was that the highest risk children were not always on the radar of other agencies. “The highest risk children were those whose needs wouldn’t meet the thresholds for a lot of different agencies. But when you put their needs together, you got a very different picture,” says Arnold.

Outcome The screening process correctly identified more than half – 55 per cent – of vulnerable young people three years before leaving education. With intervention and support, the team was able to reduce the number of young people who actually went on to be Neet.

Figures for the test school show a downward trend in young people classed Neet on leaving school, from 11.9 per cent in 2007 to 5.52 per cent in 2010.

The screening process is carried out by hand and it can take two days to screen one school. The scheme is to be run across Sandwell and a new electronic system for data collection is being piloted.

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