100 hours of ‘work experience and professional enrichment’ promised
The Liberal Democrats have pledged to end the ‘NEET crisis’, as they met for their annual conference in Brighton earlier this week. Munira Wilson, the party’s education spokesperson, used her speech to promise that this would be ‘the last generation where somebody talks about NEETs’ (young people not in education, employment or training). She argued that ‘Young people are not lazy, they are not work shy, they are not the problem’, and that NEETs represented as much an economic failure as an educational one, with ‘jobs that don’t exist, apprenticeships never created because our economy is not growing.’ She added: ‘So this is not just a problem with our education system. In fact, we should be proud of what our schools do achieve.’
Ms Wilson set out what she called ‘the most ambitious work experience policy of any party’, a proposal to guarantee every young person 100 hours of ‘work experience and professional enrichment’ prior to their 18th birthday. She also said that under the party’s plans, young people would receive ‘personalised job support to help them work out what and who they want to be, and crucially how to get there.’ She said this would take the form of ‘bespoke support, multiple times per year’, and would build on best practice from countries such as Germany and the Netherlands.
Among the criticisms she made of the current government’s education policies, Ms Wilson took aim at the recently announced plans to offer vocational pathways from the age of 14. She argued this was too early for young people to make firm career choices, and that it could particularly lead to those from less advantaged backgrounds being ‘funnelled’ down vocational routes. Instead she proposed that a Liberal Democrat government would introduce a new post-16 baccalaureate, which would be an ‘evolution’ of A Levels, and be offered alongside both T Levels and V Levels. This would ‘broaden education’ and encourage ‘pursuits of academic, creative and technical discipline, because no young person should be forced down a study pathway that doesn’t suit or interest them’ she said.
The party estimates that its plans would cost in the region of £300 million per year, and it plans to pay for this by repurposing funding that will be saved as a result of falling pupil rolls.
Greensheets will have news from the other party conferences in the coming weeks.