FEA response to the Milburn Review

The Milburn Review makes for a sobering read, but if we take its findings seriously, it should result in nothing short of a total overhaul of the way education institutions, public services, and the employment market function for young people entering the world of work.

Its analysis boils down to a simple truth: young people aren't the problem, the institutions created to help them are.

While this conclusion may come as no surprise to the young people who have lived this reality, it brings welcome clarity to one of the defining challenges facing the country. It is now non-negotiable for policy and practice to begin from this diagnosis.

The direction of travel set out by this report is right - we need to (finally!) join up education, health, welfare and the labour market so that there is a coherent pathway from cradle to career for young people. The review rightly argues we need to incentivise system actors around meaningful outcomes for young people, rather than activity, and that we have to stop being so deficit-led in our mindset. Asking what young people can do, rather than cataloguing what they can't, has to be a better starting point.

This approach underpins our Neighbourhood to National strategy at the FEA, and will be a golden thread through the work of our place-based collaborations working to support young people who are NEET in South Yorkshire and the West Midlands.

We also strongly agree with the Review's conclusion that pupil premium funding has been beneficial, but ultimately insufficient to fully support all of the needs of the young people who need it the most. We hope that as the Review heads to its final report, there will be some consideration not just to increasing the level of Pupil Premium funding, but also expanding it to the 16-19 age range, as we've been calling for as part of the Student Premium Coalition.

We're looking forward to the full recommendations made in the final report and hope they will be bold and transformational to fully address the scale of the failures outlined so far.

We'll also be playing our part, through supporting policy and practice with our Collective Voice, Strength and Action.