Today, as about one million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training, the Make Neets History report from Impetus - The Private Equity Foundation, calls for the creation of a Secretary of State for school-to-work transitions. This report is one of the latest to express a long line of concerns and criticisms about the relationship between the education system and the labour market. T R Fyvel, in his book The Insecure Offenders, asked in the 1960s how well schools were preparing young people for the technological opportunities that lay ahead of them.
Over the following decade, Prime Minister Jim Callaghan referred to conversations with employers that routinely deplored the way schools prepared young people for work; the Youth Training Scheme sought to provide a bridge to work by equipping young people more effectively for the jobs available. The emergence of the "Neet" phenomenon has prompted more debate as to whether this was primarily a product of poor labour market supply by schools and vocational training, or weak demand from a diminishing youth labour market.
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