Alan Milburn, former UK cabinet minister, is on a fact-finding trip to Dublin to understand how Ireland halved its Neet rate (young people not in education, employment, or training) from 14.3% in 2015 to 6.1% last year, while the UK's rate rose from 11.1% to 12.8%.
Ireland's rapid improvement
At an Irish Rail training centre in Inchicore, Milburn told apprentices that Britain has over a million Neet young people, calling it a crisis. He noted Ireland's rate is about half of the UK's and has fallen rapidly, asking, "What is that? Why? There's something going on; maybe there's something you guys have been doing that we haven't?"
Over the past decade, Ireland achieved the fastest reduction in Neet rates in the EU, with Romania the only country with a higher rate than the UK.
Learning from Irish policies
Milburn's delegation includes officials, charity leaders, industry bosses, and the mayor of South Yorkshire, Oliver Coppard. They visited St Seton's secondary school, where teachers receive extra government funding under the DEIS programme to support disadvantaged students. The school focuses on technical education and work experience, with a transition year option before students choose academic or vocational leaving certificates.
Student Calum will start an apprenticeship at Diageo's Guinness brewery after completing his applied leaving certificate, saying, "It was easy thanks to the school."
Youth services and recommendations
At the Reco Central Youth Facility in Ballymun, one of Dublin's most deprived neighbourhoods, Milburn saw a hub providing activities, mental health counselling, careers guidance, and job support. He noted that since 2010s austerity, spending on youth services in England has been cut by 73%, and children from poorer backgrounds where a youth club closed performed almost 12% worse in exams at age 16.
Milburn will call for the government to boost youth support, with schools identifying pupils at risk of becoming Neet. He said, "We have got to get upstream because this country, and young people, are paying the price of failure."
Dr Sarah Hughes, boss of Mind, added, "In the UK we use the language of kids being 'hard to reach' all the time. The kids are not hard to reach, it is us that are hard to reach."
