16-17 year olds who are not in education, employment or training

16-17 year olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) or with unknown status

This measure is the proportion of West Sussex resident young people of academic age 16 and 17 who are not engaged in some form of education, employment or training. It is consistent with the Local Authorities duties to encourage, enable and assist young people to participate in education or training (Education and Skills Act 2008, S.68).

Combined NEETS and Unknown

February 2021 performance

The last verified data for NEET/Not Known is from February 2021. The current NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) figure stands at 2.2% and the current “Not Known” figure, as is 5.1%. The combined figure, of 7.3%, compared to 11.1% at the end of February 2020, is an improvement of 3.8%. This showing as the best result in at least the last four years.

Although we are worse than England, 5.5% and the South East 6.4%, by 2.4% and 1.3% respectively, the gap has narrowed compared to the same period last year, where the gap to England was 6.5% and the South East 5.6%.

West Sussex's 3-month average (December 2020 - February 2021) for NEET and Not Known combined

This has reduced by 4.32% since the same period in 2019, down to 7.66%. The improvement in 2020 was the 2nd best in the region and one of only 5 LA's with a significant improvement of over 1% since 2019.

Furthermore, West Sussex was ranked 4th in the country in respect of the level of improvement compared to last year (only behind Reading, Bristol and Sunderland) and, therefore, West Sussex has made the best improvement of any County Local Authority in the country.

Note: At each September 1st, all the cohort is set to "not known" and the process of changing statuses to employment, education or training (EET), NEET or still unknown starts. Therefore, the picture in each authority, depending on how far the process is along, will have wildly different percentages during September, October and November. This is the reason that the average of December, January and February is used in the DfE publicly available data.

NEETs

Not Known

Actions

Whilst we have identified more young people who are NEET, we are able to ensure we can offer support in a far more targeted way to help young people struggling to fulfil their career potential. Around 500 young people who are NEET are currently being supported by our team of careers advisers and many are gradually re-engaging with education and training, many building up their confidence and skills by starting on short term employability courses before moving on to more full time education, training or employment opportunities. There remains a number of young people with complex issues for whom we are working with our partners to ensure the right support is made available for them so that they can also progress.

Every young person who is NEET remains a concern for the Council and we continue to focus a significant amount of time and resource in helping them find appropriate education and training. We commenced a new European-funded NEET project in the summer and so far we have signed up over 100 NEET young people onto the programme.

We have made great strides over the last year to improve the accuracy of our data collection. We now have significantly less 16-18 year olds for whom we do not know what their current education, training or employment status is (5.6% compared to 8.0% last year). So whilst we have identified more young people who are NEET we are able to ensure we can offer support in a far more targeted way to help young people struggling to fulfil their career potential.

Over 250 young people who are NEET are currently being supported by our team of careers advisers and many are gradually re-engaging with education and training, many building up their confidence and skills by starting on short term employability courses before moving on to more full time education, training or employment opportunities. There remain a number of young people with complex issues for whom we are working with our partners to ensure the right support is made available for them so that they can also progress.