The latest NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) figures should stop us in our tracks.
1,012,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are now not in education, employment or training (NEET) in the UK.
That’s more than one in eight.
Youth Employment UK says this is the first time the number has gone above one million since 2013, and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) puts the NEET rate at 13.5% for January to March 2026.
We need to take this as a call to change – and quickly.
Young people who have not found a place where they feel safe, understood, or able to move forward. Whose relationship with education, and the workplace, has already been shaped by misunderstanding, unmet needs, or a loss of trust.
At Inclusion Education, we work with young people who have often reached a point where education stopped feeling possible. Many are living with complex mental health needs with co-occurring neurodivergence. They have all been made to feel that the problem sits within them, rather than in environments that were never built around their needs in the first place.
The work to rectify this begins with the understanding that:
● When a young person does not feel safe, they cannot learn.
● That behaviour is a form of communication.
● Feeling seen, heard and understood is paramount to success.
It sounds simple, and it is. But it is simply not happening consistently enough, leading to breakdown in relationships that need time to heal and repair.
Too often, young people are expected to keep adapting to systems that are not adjusting to them. Then, when they struggle, the story quickly becomes about behaviour, attendance, or effort.
When more than a million young people are now outside education, employment, or training, we need to be honest about what that says.
This is not about a generation that lacks ambition. It is about too many young people being let down by systems that do not meet them where they are. Alan Milburn’s interim review says the country is at risk of a “lost generation” and describes a wider failure across education, health, welfare, and employment. The review also warns that, without urgent action, the number of young people who are NEET could rise to 1.25 million by 2031.
That should concern all of us – because it is up to us to make a change.
A safe learning space is not a soft option. Because if a young person never gets the chance to feel safe in education, how are they supposed to build the confidence, trust, and self-belief they need for what comes next?
A nurturing environment is not lowering expectations.
A personalised pathway is not asking for less.
It is what gives a young person the chance to regulate, to trust, to learn and to believe that their future can look different.
When the environment adapts to the person, not the other way around, potential unlocks.
"Our unique school environments are carefully designed to promote psychological safety. That does not happen by chance. Safe spaces, sanctuary pods, welcoming classrooms, and carefully thought-out social areas all combine to enable learners to feel safe and able to thrive."
Of the young people who are NEET, 613,000 are economically inactive. This means that they are not currently looking for work. Youth Employment UK says this is the highest recorded level of economic inactivity among NEET young people since 2001, while the ONS confirms that economic inactivity among NEET 16 to 24-year-olds rose by 66,000 on the quarter to 613,000.
That matters because the story here is not just about unemployment. It is also about disconnection. Youth Employment UK has linked this rise to worsening mental health pressures and a fiercely competitive job market, and its wider labour market analysis says the proportion of young people not in full-time education who are economically inactive is now the highest since ONS records began in 1992. It also points to falling vacancies, with 705,000 advertised vacancies in the most recent quarter, down 7% on the year.
The Milburn review makes a similar point: for too many young people, the first rung of the ladder is no longer there. It says that six in ten young people who are currently NEET have never had a job, and argues that detachment from the labour market is becoming more entrenched at exactly the point young people should be entering adult life.
This matters even more for young people with mental health needs and SEND. National responses to these figures are clear that young people facing additional barriers need earlier, more tailored support, and better pathways into work.
Alex Edwards, Head of EB8 explains:
"One of the biggest misconceptions about young people who are NEET is that they lack ambition. In reality, many of the young people we work with desperately want to move forward - they want jobs, independence, friendships and purpose. What they often lack is a bridge between where they are now and where they want to be.
For young people with SEND, neurodivergence, or mental health needs, that bridge has to be purposefully unique. We cannot expect them to fit into systems that were never designed around their needs and then be surprised when they disengage.
At Inclusion EB8 and through our Youth Hub partnership, we see first-hand what happens when young people are given personalised support, meaningful work experience, trusted relationships and a clear pathway into employment and upskilling. Confidence grows, aspirations return and futures begin to feel possible again.
If we are serious about reducing NEET figures, we need to stop asking why young people are disengaging and start asking how we can create environments where they feel they belong, can develop their strengths and can see a future worth working towards. Inclusion is not just an education issue; it is an employment issue, an economic issue and ultimately a societal issue."
Kristian Still, Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Inclusion Education, has reflected in response to the NEET data, the harder question may be this:
● What if we have misunderstood what the system is inadvertently producing?
● What if the system is doing exactly what it has been designed to do, but not what we hope it will ultimately achieve?
These questions matter because the NEET pattern is not evenly spread. Milburn’s review is clear that some groups of young people face much greater risks of becoming NEET, including those with SEND, disabilities and health conditions, and young people facing disadvantage. Youth Futures Foundation has also said that young people facing barriers such as SEND or care experience need more tailored support and better joined-up pathways into work.
The system can be very good at delivering certain outcomes. It can provide structured support, extended time in education, planned provision and a degree of safety for young people who need it most. But what it is far less consistent at delivering is what comes next.
Transition is where the system becomes less certain, less connected and less reliable. Young people can move from relatively coordinated support into fragmented pathways shaped by thresholds, funding and eligibility. That is where unintended consequences begin to show.
As Kristian puts it:
“EHCPs don’t create this problem. They expose it. They identify the group of young people most dependent on the system. Young people who have been well supported for years can find themselves navigating unclear pathways into employment, facing entry barriers, at precisely the point it is needed most.”
That shifts the question.
● Not just what support did we provide?
● But what did that support make possible once it was concluded?
And it raises a deeper challenge:
“Are we designing systems that prepare young people for their independence, or systems that prepare them to function within support?”
The Milburn review puts the economic cost at £125 billion a year. But anyone who works closely with young people knows the real cost runs deeper than that. It shows up in confidence lost, shame carried, futures narrowed and young people starting to believe there is no place for them.
Our own language says it plainly: what is the cost of getting it wrong? Lost potential, lost futures, lost lives.
Young people do not become disconnected from learning, work, and training overnight.
For these young people, the process starts much earlier during secondary or even primary school. And the compounding effect of:
● Anxiety that goes unsupported.
● Needs that go misunderstood.
● Shame that builds over time.
● Repeated experiences of not fitting into a one-size-fits-all system.
And the results of this mismanagement of needs is in the numbers we are seeing today.
More than a million young people are telling us, through their absence from education and work, that something is not working.
Better education is possible. Better futures are possible. But only if inclusion stops being an afterthought and becomes the foundation.