Raising of the participation age in the UK: the dichotomy between full participation and institutional accountability

Abstract

Raising of theThe economic context facing young people has changed significantly over the last three decades with young people having to negotiate a different path to adulthood than their parents. At a time of mass youth unemployment, the introduction of the raising of the participation age (RPA) policy advocates the positive benefits of a prolonged period of education and training for all young people. As part of the policy, accountability was placed on schools and local authorities for its implementation, with government imposed destination measures being used as an indicator of the policy's success. This paper argues that the RPA policy will have little impact on young people who are not in education, employment and/or training (NEET) and that the accountability for the policy's implementation is at best problematic and at worse fundamentally flawed.

Policy responses to real world challenges associated with NEET youth: a scoping review

“…It has been found that policy-makers can underestimate the interactions between micro, meso and macro levels (Sergi et al, 2018), with several studies indicating that the NEET category is directly affected by structural changes (Kelly et al, 2015;Holte et al, 2019;Amendola, 2021), notwithstanding changes in the demographic structure (Kelly et al, 2015). In particular, globalization and neoliberalism (Holte et al, 2019), the previous economic downturn (Scandurra et al, 2021), economic policy decisions (Simões, 2018), normalization of flexible labor market opportunities (Nielsen et al, 2017), labor liberalization (Katznelson, 2017), as well as the education system and labor market structure (Kelly et al, 2015;Lambert et al, 2015;Ryan and Lórinc, 2015;Novkovska, 2017;Avila and Rose, 2019) are considered such structural changes.…”

A qualitative exploration of 14 to 17-year old adolescents’ views of early and preventative mental health support in schools

“…The lower age of 14 was set as this marks the start of Key Stage 4, which has previously been identified as a significant source of stress and worry 28 . The upper age of 17 was set, as from 18 years of age young people are not required to remain in education 29 , and would be eligible to access adult mental health services 30 . An exclusion criterion was imposed on participants receiving treatment for pre-existing mental health issues, as the focus of this research was on early intervention and prevention.…”