Employer Involvement in Schools: A Practical Guide for Headteachers
17 April 2013
Against a backdrop of economic recession, high youth unemployment and a sustained reduction in public funding, the task of supporting young people to make effective post-16 transitions into further education or employment is highly challenging. This document is based on a literature review produced under The NFER Research Programme, as part of the From Education to Employment theme. Collectively, these reviews identify strategies for assisting young people at risk of becoming not in education, employment or training (NEET) to make effective post-16 transitions into further learning, or into employment.
The literature reviews in the NFER From Education to Employment series build on another recent piece of NFER research, which identifies three discrete sub-categories of young people aged 16–17 who are NEET. These sub-groups are:
- ‘open to learning’ NEETs – those young people who are most likely to reengage in education or training, in the short term
- ‘sustained’ NEETs – those young people who can be characterised by their negative experience of school, involving high levels of truancy and exclusion, and low academic attainment
- and ‘undecided’ NEETs – those young people who may be similar in some respects to those who are ‘open to learning’ NEET, but are dissatisfied with the opportunities available to them and their inability to access what they want to learn or train in, and/or in their preferred ways of doing so.
Through these literature reviews, NFER offers school leaders and others an unique perspective on the research and evidence-based practice over the preceding five years in this field, and also identifies gaps for future research in the area.