Scottish Government

General

• Females spend more time in NEET in total than males and are more likely than males to be economically inactive rather than unemployed, but males are more likely than females to have more than one NEET spell.

• Financial constraints
• Low attainment
• Personal problems
• Disrupted family relationships
• Negative experiences of schooling
• Self perceptions
• Pregnancy and childcare
• Low expectations of school teachers/careers advisers
• Benefits trap
• Less tolerance of disruptive behaviour in colleges
• Anxieties
• Gender

Additional Support Needs Group

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT NEEDS could include all of the following:

• specific learning needs;
• language/communication disorders;
• social/emotional needs;
• disabilities;
• individuals whose first language is not English

The needs and associated responses for each type of ADDITIONAL SUPPORT NEEDS are quite different.

Most of the issues identified below relate mainly to those with disabilities:

• Low educational achievement
• Information deficit on support available
• Out of date advice from Information, Advice and Guidance outlets
• Low employer awareness
• Inaccessibility to the workplace
• Stereotypes by employers and educators
• Lack of effective communication between support agencies
• Behavioural difficulties

Minimal data on this NEET sub-group - as a whole - is provided in current literature. In particular the literature does not consider specific data on the numbers/characteristics that make up this sub-group, or a further breakdown of the groups within it.

Asylum Seekers

No data on this sub-group is provided in current literature on the NEET group.

Black Minority Ethnic ( BME) Groups

• BME make up 8 per cent of the UK population and 2.1% of the Scottish population (Census, 2001). In Scotland, unemployment as a percentage of economic activity (for 16-24 year olds) is based on the following: Indian - 7.4%; Pakistani and other South Asia - 11.9%; Chinese - 5.2%; Other - 10.3%.

• Living in deprived areas.
• Lack of fluency in English
• Lower educational achievement
• Higher incidence of poor health
• Low uptake of formal childcare
• Unfair treatment by employers

Limited reliable data exists on this sub group.

Educational disaffection
( e.g. low attainers, truants)

• 16 per cent of persistent truants are in some form of part-time education or training, and 21 per cent of the occasional truants.

• Low attainment
• Persistent or occasional truancy in year 11
• Reproduction of educational disadvantage across generations
• Jobs available tend to be in personal and protective services, sales occupations, plant and machine operatives
• Lower qualification levels

The Effects of Low Attainment on Young People's Outcomes at 22-23 uses data from SSLS. The report is in draft format.

Family disadvantage and poverty group

• According to 'Better behaviour in Schools' in Scotland:-
• between 40,000 and 60,000 children are affected by parental drug and alcohol misuse.
• about 13,500 children have a parent in prison.
• around 9,000 children run away from home each year; about a quarter of these will sleep rough.
• around 100,000 children live in a home where someone is suffering from domestic abuse.
• About 14 per cent of children between 7 and 19 years old have caring responsibilities.

• Parents with low skilled occupations, not in full-time work, or not owner-occupiers
• One-parent families or very large families.
• Geographical location - regions with history of high unemployment
• Communities where having aspirations leads to social exclusion
• Unskilled manual backgrounds
• Costs of travel, books and equipment
• Changes in the labour market: decline in skilled manual jobs
• Second/third generation unemployment in families
• Attitudes on past employment patterns
• Geographic isolation in disadvantaged rural areas - poor transport links
• Employers stereotyped attitudes

Limiting Long Term Illnesses ( LLTI)

• 43-45 per cent of the total population in Scotland not seeking work could be made up of people with moderate to severe mental health problems.
• 12 per cent of the adult population in Scotland is 16-24; 9 per cent of these suffer from LLTI.
• About 5 per cent of students entering Higher Education declared themselves disabled.
• Of 700 pupils leaving special schools in Scotland in 2000/01, 45 per cent entered full time Further Education, 14 per cent training and 8 per cent employment
• The Disability Rights Commission Report highlighted that employment rates vary between types of disability, but it estimates an unemployment rate of 72 per cent amongst those with a mental illness.

• Jobs available: short-term contracts, low pay, poor conditions and little training
• Insufficient skills to reach level of employability required
• Managing medication
• Stigma
• Sheltered accommodation arrangements disallow residents to work and remain in sheltered accommodation
• Specific to disabled people:
• Lack of information among schools about employment options, transport and access difficulties
• Disincentives within the benefits system to take up employment

Substance abuse (alcohol/drugs) group

• According to Information and Statistics Division, approximately 15 per cent of 'treatment seeking' drug users are currently in employment or training.

• Fear of losing welfare benefits
• Standard recruitment requirements and procedures of employers
• Personal attitudes: fear of failure, low expectations and lack of self confidence
• Rural areas:
• deficiency in the provision of specialist service
• attitudinal barriers, such as the stigma associated with drug use in small communities

Teenage Parents

• In 1999, it was estimated there were 90,000 conceptions to teenagers every year, including 7,700 to under 16 year old girls and 2,200 to girls under the age of 14.
• 40 per cent of young women who had been NEET aged 16 to 18 were mothers of at least two children at the age of 21 compared to less than 5 per cent of their non- NEET contemporaries.
• Of those young women who had been NEET for six months or more aged 16 to 18, over 70 per cent were mothers at the age of 21.

• Availability and cost of childminder
• Guilt of leaving child with a childminder

Data taken from Labour Force Survey and Survey on English Housing as recorded in the Literature Review of Costs of being NEET. These are large household surveys; therefore do not include those not living in households.

Young carers

• Estimates of the numbers of young carers have varied from between 10,000 and 210,000 with one of the latest estimates suggesting a figure of 32,000.
• Young carers are more likely to be young women than men

Data taken from the Labour Force Survey and Survey on English Housing as recorded in the Literature Review of Costs of being NEET. These are large household surveys; therefore do not include those not living in households.

No robust data on this sub-group is provided in current literature on the NEET group. In particular the literature does not consider issues faced by this group.

Young Care Leavers Group

• 11,200 children in Scotland are being looked after by Local Authorities
• Nearly half of children in care are not educated in mainstream provision and 11 per cent are not educated at all.
• Young people living in foster care are likely to fare better than their counterparts in residential units.

• Poor attainment
• Behavioural problems at school
• Non-attendance at school
• Higher levels of exclusion
• Educational dislocation
• Attitudes of teachers and their peers
• Perception that no one takes an interest in their education
• Lack of clarity over responsibility amongst professionals
• Education is not valued in the carer environment

Young Offenders

• Youth crime is widespread. The Youth Lifestyle Survey indicated 26 per cent of young men and 11 per cent of young women committed at least one offence in the previous 12 months.

• Truancy
• Social exclusion
• Criminal record as a barrier to employment