Writing about his celebrated 1966 song Dead End Street, The Kinks’ songwriter and performer Ray Davies said its inspiration was his father talking about the 1930s depression and worklessness.

Fast-forward nearly 100 years from the Great Depression and we now have predictions of fundamental changes in employment stirred by AI systems.

Alan Milburn, the prime minister’s work tsar, is currently investigating the soaring number of young people aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training - Neets in the jargon.

Their number is just under 1 million - equivalent to one in eight young people.

Students not engaging in secondary

In a recent interview, Milburn highlighted the fact that these Neets include 66,000 people aged between 16 and 18. “They should be in full-time education - it’s a legal requirement...We just don’t know what’s going on,” he said.

Well, those of us working in schools and colleges do know what has been going on since Milburn sat around Tony Blair’s Cabinet table. In essence, we have an examination and assessment system that has repeatedly failed the forgotten third.

Recent government announcements about introducing V levels from 2027 may delineate useful routes post-16.

But they do not address pathways through secondary education that might engage the many young people whose non-attendance patterns show what they think of being in Year 9, Year 10 and Year 11 classrooms.

Capturing children’s interest

Primary education in England is successful at engaging the vast majority of children up to age 11. The seeds of disengagement take root early in secondary schools.

One place Milburn might look is Lift Schools’ recent report and initiative to look afresh at how secondary education is seeking to capture students who feel on the margins.

And if he is prepared to seek answers in the private sector as well as the state sector, it is worth studying how a number of independent schools have radically reorganised their curriculum for 13- to 16-year-olds.

Bedales School has been doing this imaginatively for a number of years, and Latymer Upper School presents a compelling case for the end of a full suite of GCSEs as we know them.

I currently chair the Essex Education Task Force and the Gloucestershire Education Forum. Both are focused this year on reducing Neets in those counties, and are testing approaches to effect change. There may well be other areas of the country doing likewise that the work tsar can learn from.

I recall Milburn giving the National Education Trust annual lecture - and his passion then, as a minister, to make a difference to educational opportunities for young people. It is to his great credit that he is still motivated by that passion and is taking on this challenge.

Radical solutions

The “Dead End Street” worklessness in Ray Davies’ song is back as a national priority to resolve this decade.

The solution is fundamentally about affording dignity to all young people - and pressing home the message that purposeful employment is pleasurable, rewarding and key to a flourishing life beyond their school days.

Milburn promises to report in the summer with some radical solutions.

Everyone involved in schools and working every day with teenagers must, together with the prime minister, wish him a positive quest.

Roy Blatchford chaired the Association of School and College Leaders’ commission The Forgotten Third, and is editor of the book The Forgotten Third: do one third have to fail for two thirds to succeed?

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