Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
40-59)
PROFESSOR ROB
MACDONALD,
DR SUE
MAGUIRE, PROFESSOR
RICHARD PRING
AND PROFESSOR
JOCEY QUINN
25 JANUARY 2010
Q40 Mr Stuart: Rob's point
is that it is a lack of jobs—the serious point about the
labour market. Well, the labour market did improve—not everywhere,
but generally. You would therefore generally have thought that
there would have been a reduction in the number of NEETs, especially
if the education system was delivering in reality the claimed
transformation in performance.
Professor MacDonald: Hasn't the
biggest rise in NEETs been seen most recently as coterminous with
the recession, which would actually suggest that demand-side factors
are quite important?
Q41 Mr Stuart: But the 10
years of economic growth and the fact that it didn't diminish—if
anything, it was about the same; it marginally increased to about
0.1%—
Dr Maguire: It has diminished
substantially for 16-year-olds over the past 10 years. It has
diminished for 17-year-olds over the past three years. Where we
have seen the sharp rise is among 18-year-olds.
Q42 Mr Stuart: Was it from
1997 to 2007 that it was about 10.7% and 10.6%? I can't remember
which one was which, but it suggested an extraordinary failure,
considering all the economic dynamism and the doubling of spending
on education. Why was that? We can easily go to a recession and
say, "It's increasing now." If we cannot solve the 10-year
problem, we are missing something, aren't we?
Professor MacDonald: Partly it
is about deciphering the figures between 16, 17 and 18-year-olds.
That point is important because it points to the effect of policy
interventions, focusing on 16 and then 17 and pushing people out
at 18. The fact that it has gone up more recently points back
to the impact of the recession. That is all I can say. I suppose
the final point is, if we had not had this policy, what would
it have looked like?
Q43 Mr Stuart: That doesn't
help us understand. We don't understand why there was no movement
in those 10 years, despite it being a high priority for Government,
the allocation of resources and the economy doing well—we
know it sucked in a lot of labour from overseas, because there
seemed to be such a buoyant jobs market, and yet there were our
young people not moving anywhere. We need to understand it.
Professor Pring: Absolutely. I
think it is a very important question. I don't think any of us
can answer it, which is a pity. But it is an important one; it
deserves an answer. I am very happy to go back to my colleagues
in the skills and knowledge ESRC project. I think they will be
able to give an answer. The question needs to be answered.
Q44 Chairman: Doesn't it take
us back to Leitch, which I mentioned at the beginning of this
session? We have this tremendous decline, a rapid decline, of
available jobs for unskilled and semi-skilled young people. Yes,
of course, in the recession we saw a lot of people coming in from
eastern Europe with skills, and the economy grew partly on the
basis of that. But for young people who do not have marketable
skills, the reality is that Leitch said that there would be only
500,000 unskilled jobs in the economy by 2020.
Professor Pring: Yes, but those
figures have been questioned very much by SKOPE, the Centre on
Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance,[1]
and by people like Ewart Keep of Warwick University, now at Cardiff,
who has made very strong arguments criticising the whole Leitch
thing, mainly because it looks as though there isn't a decline,
really, in unskilled work. You still need people to clean and
wash up and all those sorts of things, and they're not declining.
Moreover, one of the problems is that we are producing more graduates
than there are graduate jobs, and they are then descending and
taking over the sort of work that, previously, non-graduates would
be able to have. It is a much more complicated one—
Q45 Chairman: Could you let
us have some notation of the research that you just mentioned?
Professor Pring: Yes. I will give
it to you afterwards. It is SKOPE, a £15 million ESRC research
centre.
Chairman: That's all good news. We'll
be moving on. Helen?
Q46 Helen Southworth: Can I ask you
about opportunities and aspirations. Bearing in mind the issues
that you've raised, Rob, around short-term jobs and low-paid jobs,
how much work has been done on segmentation to identify young
people who are either underperforming against or not currently
able to aspire to what they could achieve? How much work has been
done around mechanisms for people within those segments to raise
either their ambitions or their targeting of jobs?
Professor MacDonald: I will go
back to a point made by Sue a few moments ago about the lack of
understanding that we have within research communities these days
about the labour market and how it works. That wasn't really the
case about 20 years ago. There was at least as much interest in
the way that the labour market functioned for young people, and
the routes that they had through, as there was in just studying
the unemployed or trying to understand them. We have much less
understanding. For instance, there is a very powerful policy discourse
which would say that the sorts of jobs that young people sometimes
get—working behind bars, perhaps working in supermarkets—are
entry-level jobs, and that the insecure "low pay, no pay"
cycle that I talked about is jobs for young people, who will use
them, step between them, gain experience and then move onwards
and upwards in the labour market. That seems to be the state of
play, but there is very little research that will actually show
you whether it is true or not. That is one of the things that
we have been trying to test in Teesside with our qualitative studies.
Being able to follow the same individuals over time shows us that
actually, the sorts of job that they were doing at 16 were the
same as at 26. Current study follows them into their 30s and adds
people who are now in their 40s and 50s as well. It shows that
those notionally entry-level jobs actually comprise the whole
labour market for some sections of workers. They are the sorts
of job that last over time. I don't know of a lot of other research
that actually comments or looks longitudinally over time at people's
patterns of experience of that sort of employment. It is absolutely
crucial that we have a greater understanding of and focus on labour
market opportunities and segments. What I would say, again, is
that I can see a growing interest not just in welfare to work
and moving people from NEET into jobs, but in trying to keep people
in jobs with job retention and advancement schemes and so forth.
That is a relatively small policy area at the moment, but I think
it is an absolutely crucial one. It is about aspirations not only
that young people should have, but what aspirations we should
have for their sort of employment. It is crucial that the sort
of jobs that they do will be here for ever. Those jobs are important:
a cleaner, a carer or working in shops. What must we do to improve
the quality of those jobs so that people can make lives and make
advancements?
Professor Pring: A lot work has
gone into this, industry by industry, by SKOPE over the past 10
years. Such work is available. For example, the work skills survey
in its answer to Leitch and lots of others gave a great deal of
detail about what is happening in different industries. That is
something with which I can easily put you in touch.
Q47 Chairman: But Richard,
we want to know about research, but we also want to know why we
do not get the information from Jobcentre Plus. The Department
for Work and Pensions must put an enormous amount of money into
finding out just the sort of thing that you are talking about
in terms of research. What does Jobcentre Plus do, if not that?
Dr Maguire: We have to remember
that our starting point is NEET young people who are 16 to 18.
They do not come under the parameters of Jobcentre Plus. They
are the responsibility of the Connexions service; Jobcentre Plus
has no responsibility for under-19s. Connexions has been charged
in recent years with the responsibility of tackling the NEET problem.
It has not been charged with understanding the youth labour market.
We are not talking about the labour market per se. Rob and I are
saying that we do not understand about young people within the
labour market, and that is where there is a dearth of research
evidence.
Q48 Chairman: So you are telling
me that the Department for Work and Pensions does not really look
at people until they come into the 18-plus category, and that
it is not interested in tracking NEETs and what happens to them
over time.
Dr Maguire: Again, we have to
look at the fact that most under-18s are not claimants, so they
are not the responsibility of DWP. They are not in the claimant
count, because they cannot claim jobseeker's allowance or income
support.
Q49 Helen Southworth: The
longitudinal studies seem to show the difference between the snapshot
of a person being in or out of training, education or employment.
The longitudinal one tells us the consequences over time of dropping
out. Surely that must be the thing that matters. If it was a temporary
six or eight months issue, it could be very significant for the
individual who is experiencing it; but if it were something that
they actually get over, move back into the market and up without
it having had a negative impact, that is a different matter.
Professor MacDonald: Yes.
Q50 Helen Southworth: We need
to identify where such things cast a shadow into the future and
mean that people consistently over time will underperform and
underachieve. We must intervene appropriately so that they do
not do that. That is the whole point. It is critical to find mechanisms
that identify the difference between someone who has experienced
a short-term impact that they will override because of other mechanisms.
Professor MacDonald: I completely
agree.
Q51 Helen Southworth: We need
to learn what mechanisms get people back on track.
Professor MacDonald: Yes. That's
what I've been trying to say. We can each probably point to different
examples of things that work. There are very good examples of
that. Richard was talking about the importance of detached youth
work with "hard-to-reach" young people. I stress again
the importance of third, fourth and fifth opportunities for people
to re-engage. One of the things that I have not said is, yes,
while we talked earlier about educational disengagement for people
in their teenage years, perhaps, it strikes us from our research
how people change, and how they would be very keen to re-engage
later on, perhaps when they are 22, 25 or 30. But the opportunity
to do that might not be so clear. It is exactly as you say. We
must try to avoid the longer-term impacts of things that happened
to people at the end of their teens and early 20s.
Q52 Helen Southworth: So the
flexibility's crucial?
Professor MacDonald: Yes.
Professor Quinn: Going back to
the issue of aspirations, there are qualitative studies that look
at young people, their perception of their lives and what they
want to do with them, and one thing that comes out of that work
is that people have desires and aspirations to do something significant,
including helping others, working in a particular field, contributing
to the community and learning meaningful skills that will get
them the kind of job that they want to do and would enjoy doing.
One issue is how we home in on those aspirations, wishes and desires
and facilitate them, and people here have spoken about different
things that can play a part in that. One is an holistic view of
the young person, where you employ different agencies from the
voluntary sector and so on to build up with that young person
the things that they are able to do and want to do. For example,
I talked about informal learning, and the young person might have
lots of skills that they don't necessarily see as a pathway into
work, but which could be built into a pathway into training and
work. That kind of holistic vision is what is missing in the way
that we work with these young people.
Dr Maguire: One example where
an holistic approach to policy is being piloted is the activity
agreement pilots that are operating in eight areas across England.
Young people receive financial support, as well as intensive support
from a PA, so we can pick up where they may wobble. They are also
offered intensive and personalised learning packages, and the
young person and the adviser negotiate what the young person wants
to do. It has been quite illuminating evaluating that policy.
You might think that telling a young person, "You can do
anything as long as you're engaging in some form of learning"
will lead them to come up with crazy and really expensive learning
or training options, but that hasn't been the case. Most of these
young people, when asked what they want to do in terms of learning,
say that they want to learn basic skills or to have some work
experience. The personal adviser has a budget to purchase individualised
packages of learning for the young person, who is given £30
a week for 20 weeks and allowed to stay on the programme for 30
weeks. The adviser can withdraw the payment if the young person
doesn't turn up, but there is a constant source of support throughout
the 20 weeks, and the young person obviously feels as though they
are getting something that is particularly tailored to their needs.
Chairman: We'd like some more information
on that pilot.
Dr Maguire: Yes, certainly.[2]
Q53 Chairman: It seems a little
like something I once said to the Prime Minister. I teased him
by saying that I wanted ordinary people such as those in the NEET
category to have what people such as Graham have—a life
coach and a personal trainer. Is this coming through the policy
chain now?
Mr Stuart: You perform both those roles,
Chairman.
Professor Pring: This is a terribly
important question. As has been mentioned, there are all sorts
of interventions and local initiatives around the country, which
are geared to young people to keep them in learning and give them
support. If you go to Lewisham college, for example, it has some
wonderful schemes to bring young people on and so on. On Merseyside,
there is "Preparation for Progress", which takes young
people and tries to help them. So there are lots of schemes around,
but again and again the problem is getting the funding. Immediately
you try to bring them into mainstream funding arrangements, they
hit targets that do not relate to them. What we have now is a
culture in which the learners have to fit in with the qualification
system, but it has to be the other way round: the qualifications
have to fit in with what is seen as necessary for particular learners,
and then we'll get somewhere. In all these different institutions,
the real difficulty is that the funding streams do not enable
some of these things to get going.
Dr Maguire: That's what the activity
agreement is.
Q54 Helen Southworth: Can
I turn the previous question upside down, in a way. In terms of
segmenting, can you identify those groups or categories of young
people who are most vulnerable within the process? If so, what
work has been done with those young people as individuals to find
out what their aspirations are, and how they can match up and
develop transferable skills that will help them to move towards
realising their aspirations?
Professor Pring: I think it would
change from region to region, and from locality to locality. Where
you have got good partnerships, such as the ones that I have mentioned,
and where there is a real coming together of the youth service,
the advice service, schools, colleges, the local university and
so on, you will find an enormous amount of work going on that
enables these young people to find the proper route through.
Q55 Helen Southworth: So,
for example, what is being done for a group that you made reference
to earlier—young women who have children or who are pregnant?
Dr Maguire: There is the "care
to learn" initiative, in which young people are given supported
transition back into learning, and which covers child care costs.
I think that the activity agreement is a good example of policy
that looks at particularly vulnerable groups of young people;
rather than saying, "You belong to that group, or that group,"
it is about identifying a core group of vulnerable young people.
However, the policy is delivered on the individual, so the starting
point is that the young person negotiates with the adviser what
they actually want to do. As Richard said, it is not about fitting
people into existing patterns of learning. It is saying, "We
will get you whatever you want to do, and we will sort that out."
Q56 Helen Southworth: But
how are we feeding in what is being learned from that process
about the barriers and the variety of things that those young
people want to do? How is that being fed into the policy and the
decision-making process?
Dr Maguire: Well, the scheme is
subject to national evaluation, and we have produced reports on
an annual basis for three years. That is feeding into the planning
for raising the participation age. It is an active pilot policy.
Chairman: Helen, can I hold you there
a moment. I did a dreadful thing and jumped from the second section
of our questions to the fourth section, and poor Annette has been
left out in the cold. I am going to bring her back into the warmth
of our discussions. We will look at policy approaches so far,
and then Graham, Helen, and anyone else can come in, after poor
Annette has had a chance.
Q57 Annette Brooke: Thank
you. May I just pick up on the "care to learn" point.
Obviously, we are focusing on a specific age group, but the "care
to learn" situation seems to highlight the fact that we need
to look at a wider age range. It has been pointed out to me that
somebody who has had a baby as a teenager will probably not get
back fully into whatever they want to do until they are over 19,
and at that point they do not get any assistance with their child
care costs. Taking that as one example, are we doing enough to
look across a wider age range? I would imagine that for many people,
such as those who have been alienated from school, things might
just take longer; they might not instantly fit into these programmes
that you are suggesting for the 14-to-19 group.
Professor MacDonald: I think you
are absolutely right—sorry, I don't know if that question
was put to me, or not.
Annette Brooke: It is to anybody.
Professor MacDonald: It is almost
accepted wisdom now, I would say, within the youth research field,
that the 16-to-19 phase does not equate with youth or with youth
transitions, and it has passed its day. Most research programmes
that get funded, for instance, will look at the 16-to-25 period.
There is general acceptance that the youth phase—the movement
from being a young person to being an adult—has become more
extended over time, more complicated, more risky and so forth.
So I think you are absolutely right. That is not just about issues
to do with when people might complete their full-time education
or get their firmest foothold on the labour market; it is to do
with parenting as well. All these markers of movements to adulthood
are being pushed up the age range for most young people.
Professor Quinn: I think the other
issue is that the young people themselves have internalised this
idea that they are a lost cause if they go past 19 and they have
not got themselves sorted out. In the research that I have done,
for example, one person said, "I now know that I'd like to
do engineering, but I'm too old at 19." There has been such
an emphasis on that period of time that it has created a culture
where people feel that if they have not sorted themselves out
by that time, they are on the scrapheap. Also, there isn't really
an infrastructure to support, help and encourage people to come
back into education when they are older. The kinds of advice and
funding that are available for people aged 14 to 19 are not there
for them when they are older. The system does not really facilitate
flexible lifelong learning, and that is what we should be thinking
about—the lifelong learning of everybody across the age
ranges, not just what happens to young people at this stage.
Chairman: Very good point. Does Richard
want to come in?
Professor Pring: Take the information,
advice and guidance service, or IAG; in many ways, it has lots
of faults and is not as comprehensive as it should be, but at
least it exists, although really only for those up to the age
of 18. People beyond that stage really do not have the kind of
infrastructure that enables them to go back and get appropriate
advice and so on. When you reach the age of 18, you drop off quite
a few lists, as it were.
Q58 Annette Brooke: Is that
an area that needs urgent attention, as far as policy makers are
concerned?
Professor Pring: The IAG or—
Annette Brooke: I think you have talked
about the IAG generally, but a number of initiatives apply to
people aged up to 25, for example.
Professor Pring: Obviously, the
more that this NEET category—if we can still use that word—extends
up, the more the mechanism for giving support and so on ought
to be extended. One thing that one learns from a lot of these
young people is that there is a need for much more tailor-made
support—learning support, seeing them and so on. If that
particular category shifts up the age range, quite clearly that
support ought to be extended, yes.
Q59 Annette Brooke: Will increasing
the participation age partly add to the shifting-up of the age
group?
Professor Pring: The increase
in the participation age for education or training in some form
or another, which was envisaged way back in 1918—it is taking
a long time for us to get there—is very good in theory.
However, unless there is good-quality, work-based learning available—there
is not enough of it now to have the national apprenticeships scheme
that the Chairman has been talking about—it is very difficult
to know how it can be meaningful. I am talking about making sure
that everybody is engaged in education and training in some form
or another up to the age of 18. There really has to be a focus
on preparing good-quality, work-based learning opportunities for
all young people before that can work.
1 Note by witness: What the Leitch projections
showed was that by 2020 there would be only 600,000 people with
low or no qualifications, NOT that there would be only 600,000
low skilled jobs. It was a forecast of individual achievement
of qualifications, not of employer demand for skills. See Felstead
et al, 2007, Work Skills, SKOPE Issues Paper, University
of Oxford, Department of Education, SKOPE Back
2
Note by witness: See Department for Children, Schools and
Families, Activity Agreements Evaluation: Synthesis Report,
November 2008. Back
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