Statistics here showed this:
NEET
In 2004, 1.1 million 16-to-24-year-olds were not in education, training or
employment (NEET).
(Source: Labour Force Survey, Office for National
Statistics, 2004).
In 2004 12% of 18-year-olds in England and Wales were
not in education, training or employment (NEET). 17% of Black young people were NEET at 18, and 6% of Asian young people were NEET at 18.
(Source: Youth Cohort Study, Department for Education and Skills, 2004).
When young people are 16 in the UK, they can stay on at school, go to colllege, take up employment or do an apprenticeship scheme. I think that's pretty much it.
If you do not do those, then you are classified as NEET, which is considered to be a BAD THING.
I think it is considered that the student herself is bad and probably the parents.
A couple of weeks ago, when I got back from work, my daughter told me she had a 'comfort call' from Connexions.
Connexions are the people who are commisioned to guide young people into careers, training or academic courses (amongst other things). It is a government funded body that is supposed to bridge school, careers and adult guidance I think.
I was quite interested in the idea of them giving my daughter a 'comfort call'; I assumed this was different to a 'comfort break' and she explained she had invented the term.
She told me it is a phone call intended to make the caller feel better about themselves, less guilty for not providing a service.
My daughter, (now 18) who has not attended school or college due to illness since she was 11, and who has not received home tuition as she was not well enough to work for as long as an hour, (the least a home tutor is allowed to work) is now a NEET person. This means she has no services offered to her still. At the age of 16 no one rang from school to ask what she was doing; no one contacted us to see whether she was OK. They continued to ignore her existance. But she gets a Connexions comfort call once per year it seems.
Aaaaanyway, the Connexions comfort caller said something like ....
Connexions person: Hello, my name is Angela. I am your personal Connexions Advisor. Can I ask if you are in Education, Employment or Training at the moment?
Darling Daughter: Hi. No I am not in any of those.
Connexions Person: You do know that we are a service that can help you, don't you?
Darling Daughter: Er yes I think so.
Connexions Person: Well we are here to help you so if there is anything we can do, pleae do feel free to ring me.
Darling Daughter: Yes, thank you.
So there you have it. Neat, huh?
I mention this , not because I want to moan or to canvass support or to try and evoke emotion. But I want to show you how easy it is to be a NEET person and how once you are one it is hard to get out of it.
(In fact darling daughter is going to sign up for a little Open University course later in the year when we hope she is through a current little 'bad patch' .)
I am prompted to think about this as today I was talking to some International students at the university, teaching in fact, about the UK Education system, in a general way. The session is designed to give the students the basics of how we do things, what is compulsory and what-not. And they were shocked that there were such things as NEET people.
Are you all shocked? Did you know about NEET people? Do you know any NEET people? Do you think it matters if people are not in Education or Employment? Do you think the term NEET is neat or nasty?
I just wondered what people think. This is quite a new topic round this neck of the woods too. One to maybe get us going ....
Afterword
(*ha ha* can you have one of these on a blog? I am just trying it out ..)
Someone said to me that in places like Australia where there are lots of kids in remote locations so therefore no access to school for different reasons, the networks have been set up for YEARS for people to be able to get an education without home tutors etc. Don't know if this is true. Don't know how it works. And what happens to these kids after school age? Do they become NEET?
12 comments:
DrJoolz, I do know about NEET kids as it is the kind of statistic I get to see- the number of NEET young people in Lincolnshire, etc, and how we might get them from being NEET to being EET, in education especially in our case. It had never occurred to me that your daughter would come into such a category and it has been very salutary for me to have a real insight into how this works at a person level as opposed to a statistics level. The comfort call sounded so nice till I read what it actually consisted of. Re your afterword, it does seem amazing that in these days of e-learning very little effort seems to be going into home schooling of a more flexible and substantial nature. As you say Australia has been doing home schooling for years- I remember books and TV stories about this as a child- so why we can't is beyond me.
I am sorry but all I know about this subject is the following:
'Thats Neet, Thats Neet, Thats Neet, Thats Neet, I really Love those Tiger Feet'
Not all that helpful eh?
I also work for the Open University teaching DD100, its a spiffing organisation.
Good Luck to your daughter.
Ha ha that made me larf DrRob. So yes laughter is always helpful.
It is weird Mary Plain about the NEET stuff; I think that if you have the right kind of thing wrong, you get help. Proper illnesses with begiinings, middles and ends are good. Or ones where the disability is constant but stable. I think there are also a lot of kids who look after parents or siblings who are NEET; or those who are bullied. The great thing is technology but it seems that so little is being made of it. There is now a NotSchool organisation which I wish had been going before: http://www.notschool.net/ns/template.php
But this still does not help NEET kids as they are too old for the project.
NEET seems to be perceived as a negative term and people seem to want to turn NEETs into EETs - maybe becuase they don't think they are contributing anything to society. But I don't think you need to be in Education, in employment or or training to contribute to society. What about people that look after other family members as DrJoolz mentions? They are contributing to family life. What about retired people? They might contribute by looking after other family members or by running drama clubs in their free time for example. What about delinquents who hang around in the streets spray painting walls? They are contributing by providing material for academics to take pictures of or write blogs on. What about the tin whistle player who no-one drops any money for? He brings a smile to my face on a shitty day at work (you have to admire his tenacity). I think NEET people can be neat just as EETs can be nasty. For example, how do some of our so-called leaders contribute to society? By starting wars, using up the earth's resources, polarising communities?
City B I like your style. I like the way you turn things upside down and it is very uplifting. I like the way you point out that there are so many ways of contributing to society and Darling Daughter does this since she even does charity work by writing to very sick children through this scheme:
http://www.postpals.co.uk/
You made me laugh too. Thanks.
Ah, good to see Dr Joolz quoting the Youth Cohort Study. As she knows I was responsible for running it in the early 1990's
Anyway, the key point for me is that NEET is a social construct. A construct which has emerged out of a society obsessed with age. Your parents, my parents, CB's parents - all NEETers. Hanging out on street corners, taking drugs, having unsafe sex (Yuk!). Or maybe not.
Aha oh yes TT. I think that you will find CB and I have the same parents.
I'm not so sure. You curvy and dark hair and eyes. CB waif-like and fair hair. Let's see what the BBC has to say on the matter
Maybe June is more experienced with foreign bodies than she cares to let on?
CB radio - now there's a thought. Thanks for the waif-like comment Trois (waif-like = good - another social construct?) and I'll think you'll find that Dr Joolz was adopted. But we won't go into that.
CityBitch, CB also stands for stands for Citizen's Band... I am not sure I want to be thought of as curvy TT. And anyway my Cyberspace persona weighs only 7 stone .
Now for the sensible stuff, thanks for the link Chris I am going to look at that site closely. It looks dead interesting on first glance, thank you. I wonder if the Notschl internet project thought of learning anything for m=the Australian distance education experience. Very interesting.
random links brought me here, but another name for you to maybe look up in terms of Australian distance education is the Open Access College, I used to work there as an illustrator of distance education textbooks, more and more of which are now being made into text/image/audio streaming packages available over the internet and via DVD. Its all very background normal stuff for many remote towns to have distance ecducation packages, not perfect but they do exist.
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