Supporting young people so they don’t become Neets | Youth unemployment

Daisy Christodoulou suggests that teachers identifying children at risk of ending up not in education, employment or training (Neets) is like dentists helping children to learn to read (Could you predict which children will be Neets? No – and it’s unfair to ask that of teachers, 11 August). But dentists often help children learn to read by stopping the toothache that can derail education. Alan Milburn is not asking teachers to fix teeth. He wants the whole system to act when teachers identify barriers to learning.

We conducted the research at the centre of this debate. Our study showed that children identified with developmental difficulties through the statutory early years foundation stage profile (EYFSP) school assessment are much more likely to become Neets in late adolescence. The EYFSP reveals the holistic educational needs of children – but teachers cannot diagnose autism, treat anxiety or fix housing. Milburn is not making teachers responsible for everything.

Christodoulou is right that schools cannot eliminate poverty, repair the housing market or create jobs. But suggesting that we must separate children struggling at school from efforts to build our economy makes no sense. The tragedy of the rise in the number of Neets is that government acts by attaching an administrative label at the end of the journey through childhood. The research shows that there are warning signs years earlier when intervention is effective.

Our Child of the North and Centre for Young Lives campaign has consistently argued that children’s lives do not respect Whitehall boundaries. Health, education, social care and economic policy converge. Building a country that works for all children and young people is not the job of teachers alone. It’s everyone’s – including dentists.
Mark Mon-Williams
Professor of cognitive psychology, University of Leeds

I beg to differ with Daisy Christodoulou. It seems to me that good primary school teachers are more than adept at doing exactly what she is asking. My wife, starting her career in the slums of Newcastle and then in Wythenshawe, seemed to me to have an acute sense of the future that faced some children.

It might have been encouraged when, years ago, on a supply posting in a secondary school in the mining valleys of Wales, she asked an exasperating teenager what he expected to do when he grew up: “A policeman, ’cos I’ve got big feet.”

One thing she does know from bitter experience is the extent of Ofsted’s baleful influence on the role of teachers, especially in primary, in nurturing children. This was reinforced recently when a secondary school-trained Ofsted inspector effectively terminated the career of a much-loved and respected primary headteacher of our acquaintance after years of steady progress in a very difficult community. Let teachers get on with the job and give them the resources to do it.
Neil Blackshaw
Alnwick, Northumberland

Daisy Christodoulou’s response is fair. Primary teachers have enough to do without speculating on children’s futures. Providing measured evidence on current strengths and weaknesses should be enough for secondary schools and services like careers guidance to support planning strategies for career development. Secondary schools are best placed to assess short and long-term potential, but they also need better training and structures to make this happen.
Simon Surtees
London