The Milburn Interim Report on Young People and Work is a stark wake-up call for anyone who cares about the future of young people and this country.

Its distressing conclusions mirror issues we have been flagging since our founder Sir Lewis Hamilton set up Mission 44 in 2021 to increase education attainment and employment prospects for young people, and which we raised with the Prime Minister and Education Secretary a year ago in Downing Street.

We have repeatedly said that disengagement from school is creating a crisis of lost learning, which has become one of the key drivers of youth long-term unemployment.

A total of 34 million days of learning were lost to unauthorised absence and suspension last year, up from 19 million before the pandemic. As Milburn rightly concludes, young people cannot learn, attainment can’t be raised and employment outcomes cannot be improved if children are not in school and engaged in lessons.

This is a bleak picture but it is crucial to understand it is not inevitable.

Milburn says this is not a problem with young people, it is a problem of a system stuck in the past. We believe systems can be radically improved. But the debate around youth disengagement is increasingly filtered through the lens of politics, economics and growth targets. Relevant as they are, they risk crowding out the perspective that matters most: that of young people themselves.

To solve industrial-scale disengagement in a generation that grew up during a pandemic and the most extreme technological changes in decades, education must urgently adapt.

Evidence from Mission 44’s Nothing Happens In Isolation campaign shows that one in five pupils feel school is not a safe or accepting place for them and that disengagement and exclusion are rarely caused by a single event. They are the cumulative result of different pressures: poverty, unmet special educational needs, poor mental health, experiences of racism or discrimination, unstable home environments and a lack of trusted relationships within schools.

These pressures start early and compound over time, increasing the likelihood that young people disengage, fall behind, and ultimately leave education without the qualifications, confidence or support needed to sustain further learning or work.

These experiences are not felt equally. Ethnic minority students, young people from low-income backgrounds and other marginalised groups are disproportionately affected by exclusion, absence and disengagement. Any serious attempt to tackle this crisis cannot be blind to inequality.

To overcome these barriers, students need to know school is a place where they can access support before challenges become entrenched. Teachers must be role models and reflect their student populations. The curriculum must inspire by reflecting young people’s lives and interests.

It is the interviews with young people not in education or training that offer a glimmer of hope in Milburn’s research.

Far from being snowflakes or slackers, they have ambition to work: 84% stated they wanted training or a job. Employers are clearly a vital part of the solution and have an essential role to play in creating meaningful pathways into work for young people.

But education is the step beforehand that also demands urgent attention. If young people are disengaging from school years before they enter the labour market, we cannot expect employment interventions alone to solve the problem.

The government must act earlier by bringing young people directly into the Department for Education to shape the policies and systems designed for them. That engagement cannot be occasional or symbolic.

It must become regular, systemic and embedded within the infrastructure of decision-making itself – including through formal mechanisms such as a Youth Advisory Board – so that young people’s experiences consistently inform how schools become more inclusive, supportive and effective places of learning, where all young people are equipped to thrive and pursue the futures that are right for them.

Leicia Feare,
Mission 44, Associate Director of Advocacy and Campaigns