Reaching out to Address the Needs of NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) Adolescents
This paper will provide an overview of the phenomenon of youth unemployment and measures to address it. Coping with the needs of NEET (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) adolescents requires the use of a variety of interventions, spanning from more effective solutions to address truancy; social support for disaffected youths and their parents; and creating a more effective job preparation curriculum within the educational system.
Categories of NEET adolescents
Truancy and NEET
Programs to Address the NEET Problem
Structural Issues
This paper will provide an overview of the problem of disaffected and unemployed youth and the various programs and methods that have arisen to address this issue. Recent economic instability has increased the number of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET), despite longstanding attempts to rectify this problem within the United Kingdom. One of the reasons for this is the complexity of the reasons for unemployment, spanning from membership in an economically disadvantaged family with few positive role models of economic success to psychological detachment to job loss. What is clear is the devastating impact of unemployment early in a young person's vocational career. According to the 2009 research study Tackling the NEETs Problem: "Research shows that disengagement at this age is disastrous in personal terms." Unemployed young people are more apt to engage in criminal activities and/or become permanently dependent upon welfare (Tackling the NEETs Problem, 2009).
Despite the economic recovery within some sectors, youth unemployment has risen. At the beginning of 2015 it was reported that "the number of people aged 16-24 who are not in full-time education or employment has increased by 8,000 ... With 498,000 in that age group without a job, an analysis by the House of Commons library for Labour shows that young people now fare comparatively worse than at any point since 1992" (Boffey 2015). From the January-March period of 2015, "just under half (46%) of all young people in the UK who were NEET were looking for work and available for work and therefore classified as unemployed" (Palmer 2015). This indicates that many NEET adolescents have given up actively looking for employment due to disaffection or discouragement with their vocational prospects. Addressing the problem requires a combination of both educational and sociological interventions to address the economic and psychological consequences of systemic unemployment.
Categories of NEET adolescents
According to a NFER analysis of Youth Cohort Study data, three essential categories exist within the NEET demographic, all of which demand different approaches to rectifying the problems which affect them (Tackling the NEETs Problem, 2009, p. 3). The first group, the "open to learning" subset (41%) may have made poor choices and dropped out but are eager to attain new qualifications and improve their circumstances (Tackling the NEETs Problem, 2009, p. 3). The second, the so-called "undecided" (22%) are floundering because they are uncertain of their career paths: "Typically they exhibit negative attitudes to school and the provision now available to them and often they appear to lack the resilience or skills to access suitable opportunities" even though they may not be permanently disaffected from society (Tackling the NEETs Problem, 2009, p. 3). The most difficult to reach are the "sustained" (38%) who are "coming from deprived backgrounds, no recent history of employment; [have] low educational attainment; and very negative experiences of school, including a record of truanting in many cases" (Tackling the NEETs Problem, 2009, p. 3).
The divisions into these different classifications suggests that while proactive educational support and job training may benefit more committed students suffering from disaffection and employment, psychological counseling and outreach may be required for those from families with more entrenched social alienation. However, other research has indicated that there are general trends which may impact NEET status. Another study found "the chief reasons for 16- to 18-year-olds NEET are often given as poor relationships with institutions in general (schools) or their ages (teachers); the perceived irrelevance of the curriculum or social problems, for example: SEN, personal difficulties and bullying" (Tackling the NEETs Problem, 2009, p. 12).
Truancy and NEET
Truancy is one of the surest predictors that a young person will fall into NEET status, particularly those characterized as sustained unemployed. "Just 35% of pupils who miss a month or more of lessons in primary or secondary school each year manage to achieve five GCSEs at grade C or above, including English...
Alternate Practice Therapy Experiment The truant individual also tends to manifest through dangerous behaviors and travel a path of extremity with sad endings and wasted lives. This chapter will serve to review literature that speaks to and of the problem of the truancy that is so highlighted in schools at the top of the 21st century. Extremely a progressive problem that is firmly within the very root of belief, thought and
Such relationships in childhood begin with the parents, and for Asher, these early relationships are also significant later, as might be expected. However, as Potok shows in this novel, for someone like Asher, the importance of childhood bonds and of later intimate bonds are themselves stressed by cultural conflicts between the Hasidic community in its isolation and the larger American society surrounding it. For Asher, the conflict is between the
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