There were two crunch issues needing radical thinking in last week’s Queen’s
speech if Labour was to begin serious welfare reform. What can we do now for
those individuals who, after 11 years of massive taxpayer investment, can
neither read, write nor add up? Simultaneously, what do we do to
revolutionise education performance so we reduce the number of people
entering this group in the future?
So far, attempts to tackle the situation have not worked. Despite a near
doubling of the education budget since 1997, one in three pupils moving from
primary to secondary education fails to achieve the minimum skills in
English, maths and science. The numbers failing to achieve the 3 Rs rise to
a staggering 4 out of 10 children. The production line spits these children
out into secondary schools whether they are ready or not.
My guess is that all too many of these 4 out of 10 failing pupils continue to
stumble – since only half the pupils at the age of 16 gain a minimum leaving
standard at GCSE of five passes at A* to C, including English and maths.
This failure among young people is thrown into extreme relief by the Neets –
those who inhabit a twilight world where they are not in education,
employment or training. The proportion of Neets is growing: the biggest
surge is among 16 to 18-year-olds, up from 154,000 in 1997 to 206,000 last
year (see table below).
What did the Queen’s speech produce in terms of concrete ideas for crucially
needed welfare reform? Not much, I’m afraid. Gordon Brown doesn’t have to
appoint a minister to think the unthinkable as Tony Blair did with me. All
he has to do is ask some of those young people travelling towards a
permanent place in the welfare queues what they would do if they could
change the system.
Over the summer I had a fascinating opportunity to learn why it was that some
young people in my constituency, Birkenhead, stopped going to school when
they were as young as 12. One evening I was asked to present awards at the
Tranmere Community Project, run by Jill Quayle in one of the poorest areas
of the country. For more than 20 years I have tried to get the tiniest part
of taxpayers’ money that seems to be spent with so little effect by the
state machine diverted to Jill. If anyone deserves to be Citizen of the Year
for being an outstanding social entrepreneur, it is she.
In an old Methodist church she runs a project where she uses theatre
productions and physical activities (including Parcour, a new kind of street
acrobatics involving running up walls and jumping off railings) to reengage
young people who have given up on formal education.
I sat at the back of the hall as the lads came in. I knew their faces quite
well. They were not strangers to me. I had seen them around over the years
and knew they had caused real trouble. In many cases I felt it was only a
matter of time before they were banged up.
The transformation that taking part in Jill’s project had wreaked on them was
amazing: they were brilliant at Parcour and knew it. They were all talking
about the jobs they hoped to do. All of them were wonderfully fit and some
of them had used their new skills to get themselves into the army where they
will now put the fear of God into the Tal-iban instead of the local
community. Others, under Jill’s guidance, had finally learnt their 3 Rs and
to join the human race.
When Ed Balls, minister for children, schools and families, gets up in the
Commons on Tuesday to continue the Queen’s speech debate, he could do much
to empower groups like Jill Quayle’s. She had 10 boys who were still on the
books of the local school; the taxpayer is spending £140 a week on each of
them – that’s £1,400 a week that the state is paying for an education they
aren’t getting and that Jill is providing for nothing. Money on that scale
would revolutionise what Jill and others like her can do; at present she is
dependent on charitable handouts and has to lobby constantly for crumbs from
the national lottery and other funding sources.
Taxpayers are paying for these boys to be educated: why not let the money
follow the individual boy rather than paying it to institutions that are not
servicing their needs?
In Birkenhead there is a flourishing Polish community doing the jobs these
boys have not been trained for. We have given up on the idea of schools
imparting technical skills such as bricklaying or mechanics. In Poland they
give young men these skills, and they come to Britain and use them. The
system is not giving the Birkenhead boys a trade and many of them from
broken homes with single mothers are desperately lacking in male role
models, of whom there are precious few in schools.
The brilliant Tranmere Project Parcour teacher at the awards ceremony was
obviously a positive and powerful influence on these boys’ lives. With
proper funding, organisations such as Jill’s could pay such gifted teachers
properly to rescue the most difficult children.
What was really striking to me was how bright and gifted these boys were. So
often they are written off, but I realised what massive potential many Neets
have – not least in the ideas they have for how the education and welfare
system could be made to work with them rather than against them.
The government believes it will persuade more young people to stay on in
education by letting them claim a £30 per week education maintenance
allowance (EMA) through their schools after 16. Maybe. But the plain truth
is that none of the young people registering at the Tranmere Project gets
EMA because Jill’s project is not large enough to qualify. Again, the funds
need to follow the individual so that community leaders like Jill can
channel it for them.
After the Tranmere Project I talked to many other young people about what
could be done; none was that interested in thinking the unthinkable. Their
attention was concentrated on thinking the workable: to abolish welfare as
we have known it. One of the groups I met was part of the government’s
“welfare to work” initiative called the New Deal (which so far has cost £2
billion).
I had not realised how stigmatised many New Dealers felt by being classified
as such. The courses they were offered were a dreary and irrelevant “one
size fits all” collection, mostly centred around IT.
One enterprising young woman told me that she kept being offered an IT course
when what she wanted was to train as a personal trainer so that she could
work in a gym or run her own business. Through sheer force of personality
she had managed to get the jobcentre to give her half the money she needed.
But it wasn’t enough to pay for the course, so she had had to go back on the
dole.
“Why,” she asked, “couldn’t they have allocated me the money and let me go and
negotiate a rate for the training that I wanted? I could definitely have
persuaded someone to train me for less.”
They were frustrated by the rigidity of the system which did not let them
choose their own destinies. I asked the group whether – if they were in
charge of their own training budgets – they would spend any money at all
with the training provider with whom the New Deal forced them to enrol. I
realised from their look of amazement that this was a question not worth
asking.
What about running their own training accounts? There was a pause. Might not
Jobcentre Plus make it part of its job to provide them with a whole range of
approved training providers? The group warmed to the idea. They particularly
liked the idea that they could hold the budget strings, because the funding
would follow them so they could force up the quality of training on offer.
They also suggested that Jobcentre Plus should give them details of the
grants that employers could get by employing them so they could use this
information when knocking on employers’ doors looking for work.
Many Neets said the rot began at school where no one took seriously their wish
to go out to work at the first opportunity. All the effort was to get them
to stay on in education (which Balls announced in the Queen’s speech that
he is now to make law). Many of these young people were bright and
entre-preneurial and wanted to get out into the world and run their own
lives.
The group’s own first plank in their revolutionary programme of
self-improve-ment was that planning for a job at 16 must be recognised as a
legitimate end in itself by schools. Penalising them for not staying on had
failed. They knew that if they left school at 16 and failed to get a job,
there would be no dole money until they were 18. Likewise they knew they
could not join the New Deal until then.
Planning to get a job should for them be a key part of their final school
year. Last week Balls announced that unemployed 18-year-olds would not have
to wait a further six months to join the New Deal, as they currently do. But
why not begin a new kind of New Deal for 16-year-old school leavers while
they are still in education? It might persuade quite a few of them to come
back through the school gates. This would help to counter what the Neets
group complained of – a school culture centred around staying on which did
not prepare them for the jobs they wanted to do.
For other young people in the group even such a new system would come too
late. They were unanimously keen on the idea of a school leaving certificate
to ensure that they had basic skills – literacy, maths, IT and so on –
which, once passed, meant they could leave school as young as 14. Now that
would be an incentive, they said. The £10,600 that taxpayers allocate for
the last two years of schooling, they suggested, could be made available for
them to draw on once they knew which training schemes they wished to take.
Radically, all the young people I spoke to believed that their right to
benefit should be time limited and that such time limiting might knock some
sense into the larger group of New Dealers who, they alleged, had no
intention of getting a job if they could help it.
These are all sensible and workable suggestions. The prime minister should
embrace the ideas of Neets and New Dealers themselves for self-improvement.
It would be the clearest demonstration yet of his intent to transform the
centralised state into an empowering one that fits individual aspirations
and the wider challenges of the 21st century.
Empowering individuals as agents of change
- Job plans in school
- New Deal starting in school for 15-year-olds
- Introducing a new School Leaving Certificate
- Awarding personal training grants with personal control
- Time limit all benefits
- Itemise employers’ subsidies so that New Dealers can help sell themselves
to potential employers
Manchester Settlement was founded in 1895 by the University of Manchester to address the consequences of poverty and deprivation. Since 2002 we have been running Complementary Education for young people with complex needs from offering support and a door of opportunity to vulnerable and difficult to engage young people. In the last academic year our young people achieved over 100 OCN accreditations at a time when they woud have achieved nothing. Despite evidenced success and schools welcoming the project it always comes down to funding. Schools are reluctant to give up funding whether a child attends or achieves. We are grant funded through the Big Lottery Fund and Children in Need. Teachers should be able to get on with their jobs and teach. Tthese children have complex social issues and need intensive support. Ministers need to stop burying their head in the sand. Until the above minority are acknowledged and provided for the majority will continue to suffer
Maria Gardiner, Manchester, England
There is a good alternative and it is being offered to the Welsh Assembly by Comit founder Rod Harrod.
At the moment it just appears everyone in Welsh Education is passing the buck and nothing is fruitfull. This is a proven project that can really assist NEET people gain active employment and also win back the desire to complete their education.
Terry, London
Terry Ellis, London, UK
Thank you so much for the excellent article- a breath of fresh air with the sensible suggestions We give high status to academic qualifications, but surely we need to give equal status and to value different kinds of achievements if society is to prosper and our young people are to be independent and have some sort of a decent life. My father was unable to afford grammar school education in the 1920's but I recall my parents' pride that he had a 'School Leaving Certificate' and was apprenticed to go on to help make Malcolm Campbell's record breaking Bluebird car. A source of pride to him. We need to give everyone that sort of satisfaction.
Becky , Sheffield,
Totally agree with these comments. Proper training should be available to these young people and they should then get priority for available jobs that are currently snatched by Eastern Europeans. Connexions are hopeless and apprenticeships way oversubscribed. It is no wonder so many youngsters give up. As the parent of an 18-year old school leaver who has been unable to find any kind of work for five months since he lacks "experience", I have found governmental resources useless and inadequate.
Des, Manchester,