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The Milburn Diagnosis · Insights from the Edge

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're listening to a new podcast from the Edge Foundation.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: This series is designed to be heard in short verse over coffee or commute.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: We bring together experts in policy, research, and practice.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: We'll explore how education and the world of work are developing for young people and education providers.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be asking how that world will give young people across the UK the knowledge and skills they need to flourish in their future life and work.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Insights from the Edge.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we are going to be looking at the findings of the recent first report from the Milburn Review, which is looking at young people not in education, employment, or training.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to be ticking at a particular lens of what young people themselves are telling us, which, as you know, is really important to us here at Edge with all of the work that we've done on Youth Voice.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Ollie Newton, Executive Director here at Edge, and joining me are two colleagues, Aisha Balak, who is head of Youth Employment Policy at Impetus, and Lauren Mystery, who is Deputy CEO of Youth Employment UK and leads the Youth Voice Census that we've been sponsoring for, I think, five years now.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that was generous of us, and it's a fantastic piece of work.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to just touch base with you first, Aisha, because we had a really good event earlier this week, the Breaking Barriers Convention that we organized with FE News.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about the day, because you were you were part of that.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was a brilliant event, as you said, and there was a really excellent lineup of speakers and activities.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: So we started with a keynote from Jackie Smith and then heard from Pat McFadden, Skills Advisor, Profel Nagand.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: And we were also joined by colleagues from across the civil service.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think all of that really spoke to how high up the government's agenda this issue is right now, and the fact that it's quite a unifying issue.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: We were also, of course, joined by organizations from up and down the country who are working on the front line and who are really crucial and the lifeblood of shifting the dial on the neat issue.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that included two impetus portfolio partners, Coach Core Foundation and Spear.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: So it was brilliant to see them.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think what I was particularly struck by was the format of the day.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: I love a panel, don't get me wrong, but it was really unique to be kind of presented with that opportunity of a couple of hours in a room with experts from government, with experts from the frontline, to really kind of get into the solutions and the knotty issues.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: So overall, 10 out of 10 in terms of an event and day.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we'll definitely be using that quote.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Aisha.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not biased, but the best panel of the day was the one that you chaired kindly for us.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a chance for us to hear about the theme that we're talking about today, kind of messages from young people themselves who had some experience of NEAT and those who worked with them.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: So tell us a little bit about what you heard as the chair of that panel.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I mean, as you said, in a totally unbiased opinion, that was the best session.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: That was my favourite session.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: But on a serious note, I think I loved that we set the tone of the day with young people and hearing from young people, ensuring that lived experience was really their front and centre.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it was important that all of us started out hearing what it means to actually be neat and the fact that this kind of imperfect label hides a million individual stories now.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: So there were things I had never necessarily thought about that were barriers to entering education, employment, or training.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: Charlie, who works for Brentford FC Community Sports Trust, talked about a young person who was ready to go and start work, had everything lined up, but then couldn't get a bank account, which I found really shocking.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I would hope that this isn't happening on a large scale, but I'm sure this is a bigger barrier than we think, particularly people not working on the front lines, such as myself.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: We also heard from Roman, the founder of Breakout charity, about the importance of trusted adults and the fact that every young person needs someone in their corner.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is something that we see a lot through the work of our portfolio partners at Impetus, so that really resonated.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Then, Best for Last, Amy was the young person on the panel and told us about how the school system wasn't necessarily able or equipped to provide the guidance that was required at that crucial kind of post-16 transition point, and then was also really generous in sharing some quite personal experiences about bullying and maybe feeling isolated at school.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I loved the session because not only did it bring to life, I guess, some of the things we already know to be true, but it also made me aware of barriers that I wouldn't necessarily have been aware of as someone who isn't working on the front line.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Such a good point, Aisha, and there was a really nice moment wasn't aware.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Charlie was going to bring another young person with her, um, and that young person couldn't come because they were on the first day of a job that Charlie'd secured for them.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think what you're saying about those maybe hidden barriers are the ones that we don't always think about so much as really powerful.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the ones that stood out for me from the day and from recent conversations has definitely been around transport in rural areas, but that's such a practical barrier to young people uh accessing the kind of opportunities that we might want for them.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Lauren, the the Youth Voice Census is is the voice of young people.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the key messages from the most recent census that are kind of relevant to the the Milburn work?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: The 2025 data set that we'll talk through was actually referenced in the Milbourne Review nine times in terms of being referenced, particularly in line with young people's experience of careers education, their readiness and preparedness for work, and how they're feeling about things like work experience and participation overall.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: We were really pleased to see the work that had gone into that.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think what else it can speak to in terms of what young people told us in the U4A Census, when we were launching that data back in September, we were really surprised to see sort of the divergence, I guess, of young people's opinions and feelings.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: For the previous seven years of U4A Census data, when we had asked young people questions about their feelings of the future, how prepared they are, if they think they can access support, we would typically see quite an even split, I suppose, a 52% of getting and a 48% of not getting, of confident and not confident.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: This year, when we launched the 2025 data set, what we saw was this kind of split in the middle, more and more young people, neutral, unsure, unaware of how they feel about some of the biggest issues that impact them.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: So when you're asking young people how safe they feel, if they feel they're going to have opportunities, it shouldn't necessarily be that they don't have any feelings at all about that.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, what we started to see as we were looking through the data is young people opting out and not by choice.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think we all know to be true, but feeling like actually some of these conversations, some of these moments in the future weren't quite right for them, weren't feeling like they could be included or put themselves out there.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: What they were telling us is they needed more of a sense of security, of safety within those systems to be able to take those next steps and choices.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: And in particular, that transition um cliff edge that we hear so much about, the youthful census is really clear that those key moments that we're expecting young people to make choices and move into something else are when they're most anxious, they're most vulnerable to those decisions.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: So 14 to 16, 17 to 19, 21, we see it in all of those moments.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: Not just a slight uptick in anxiety because something's new and something's changing, but actually a fundamental shift in their self-belief, in their confidence and their willingness and readiness to apply for work.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: So really, those really, really important issues that we see coming out for young people.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: And then I suppose the last point is is around kind of participation and some of those missed moments.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: Youth World Census really clearly tells us that young people aged 11 to 14 are some of our most excited about work, most excited about the future.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: And this isn't, it isn't just work, it's about the opportunities, what life might be for them.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: Something happens then as they move through those systems.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: We're looking forward to exploring more of that this year in the census, but we have this real moment.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: Young people at those ages can name lots of jobs that they want to be.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: They can explore, they can feel really confident about what's happening around them.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: Something then shifts and changes.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: I had a little look at what this year's census might start to allude to, too.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things that's always really um interesting to me is how quickly the public noise, I suppose, around any of the big issues start to filter into how young people are thinking and feeling.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: We'll expect to see um more of that shift in terms of kind of divergence of views, these young people kind of sitting in the middle, almost like those inactive or sort of feeling debilitated by the system.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: But this year, in particular, when we ask young people, there are issues that are impacting them locally where they live.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: Jobs is the second biggest issue.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's the very first time that has happened in the E4A census.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: Young people's local issues tended to center around more of uh geography or political issues that might sit around them.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: Jobs is the big issue young people are telling us about this year.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: They are hearing what we are saying about a lack of jobs, and that fear is already kind of embedding and setting in in terms of whether they feel like there'll be jobs and opportunities for them where they live.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Lauren, your your wider work at Youth Employment UK looks a lot at the kind of nexus between employers and young people.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just wanted to get your take really uh obviously, you the youth census is all about uh young people's views, but what are you hearing from your employers?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: We we sometimes get quite stereotypical views about what they're saying about young people, but I'm sure it's more complicated than that.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it absolutely is more complicated than that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: In line with the UFOI Census, we take a similar cut of data from our good youth employers.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um so our membership of employers complete something called the benchmark.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: So we ask employers questions around their biggest issues, how they're preparing young people to explore early careers moments, to experience work experience in whichever way that might be, and then to move into employment.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: We still continue to hear some of those same myths across a wider sector, but also our membership that young people aren't ready for work.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: And you can't really be ready for work until you are in work because you haven't done it before.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: So there is there are still some of those kind of myths to break down in terms of actually who prepares you for work, how you do that, who's really ready for a job until they're in it.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: But one of the things we're hearing from our membership, once they have hired young people, that scope has become so much wider in terms of what employers feel they need to provide.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: The transition into work, particularly for our neat young people, is a support in terms of not just being ready to work and communicate with people, that there's a practical Sandrist transition too of traveling to your new employer, understanding how that works.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: There's a social transition as well of dealing with different age groups.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um there's a lot to be said around some of the issues around kind of social cohesion, working with different groups of people for the very first time.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: So from the employers within our network who are youth-friendly and are more youth-ready, the biggest thing they would tell us is how much more of a pastoral role they need to play in terms of supporting these young people into work, which I think um the Melbourne Diagnostic Review lays out really clearly.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: What we also see, even from employers that have been doing this work for years, is that there can often be this real desire to do good, but a lack of direction.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um you will at the moment be speaking to perhaps three of the different government departments about how you might be supporting the Youth Guarantee, the jobs guarantee, how you are going to be able to support our education system to move in line with modern work experience, and then also how we might connect employers through DCMS to the Young Futures Hub.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: From an employer perspective, they have always, for the most part, been really responsive to what's going on and what's happening, but actually that really reactive view often leaves them then without a coherent strategy, without a coherent way to be able to make that work.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: Our good youth employment benchmark findings this year show a bit of a missing middle in terms of work experience.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: Lots of great moments where employers are going into education, they're really clear on what they might need for their apprenticeships, but actually, in terms of really offering good work experience, responding to T-levels, being able to really understand what coherent youth employment strategy is, is one of the things they're working on.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then how they can monitor and measure that really well for the future, too.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: We know in any organization that's going to suffer skill shortages, um, which is the majority and most of them, they need to be speaking to 13-year-olds now.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: But that sort of short-termism of uh kind of previous work that employers might have done is really leaving them in the lurch.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: They are looking at spending their budget, hiring their next batch of apprentices, and they're not looking kind of far enough ahead to think actually, these 13-year-olds need to be hearing now about engineering, about hospitality, about some of the big moments there too.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's really difficult for employers to be, uh, or it appears to them to be really difficult to really be thinking that far ahead when things feel so um kind of frictious and uncertain at the moment.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Your your point about employers, Lauren, made me think of uh something a careers advisor told me a couple of weeks ago where they'd organised an event for an alumnus to come back and uh had asked them to say what was their kind of biggest reflection and tip on starting work, and they'd put up a slide and it the words appeared one at a time, we are all winging it.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, that's that is very true.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good tip.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Aisha, you've done a huge amount of work at Impetus to support organizations that are working with young people who are not in education, employment, or training.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the second half of the collective I thought was really positive.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: People were talking a lot about solutions and what can be done.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: What have you seen that's really working?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: So at Impetus, we're really lucky because we work with you know some of the most impactful education and employment non-profits, which means that we're able to kind of take those first-hand insights from the organizations and then inform our research and policy work.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give you three or four things that I think we've seen working overall.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: So the first one is early intervention.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: We've found that for the young people furthest away from the labour market, as Lauren was kind of hinting at just now, support needs to be offered at the earliest opportunity, and that means school.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're finding that prevention can often be more effective than intervention.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: If we know that poor attainment and lost learning through absence, suspensions, exclusions are indicators that a young person will become neat in later life.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Why are we waiting until it's too late?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it means ensuring that young people are engaged at school and then also getting the support that they need, uh, such as through tutoring interventions to help them work towards attaining those really crucial GCSE grades.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: We work with a brilliant and quite broad range of partners.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that ranges from, you know, multi-academy trust to tutoring organizations to Voice 21, which is the National Oresy Charity, all of which are supporting young people to either get the crucial qualifications they need or to stay engaged in education, both of which are really protective against becoming neat in later life.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing I would say is that individualized one-to-one support is really important.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's plenty of evidence highlighting the role of personalized support in delivering successful employment interventions.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um this is usually delivered by a provider such as a work coach or you know, in a mentoring type role.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: And we've seen how this kind of support, not generic one size fits all models, are really useful, particularly for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly in helping them transition into secure employment, educational training.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Organizations such as SPIA use intensive coaching and career support to help young people into education, employment, or training.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: SPIA were also actually the first employment charity to undergo a positive evaluation by the Department for Work and Pensions Employment Data Lab.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we know that their program works.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: It demonstrated a 17% reduction in the likelihood of young people being neat for a full two-year tracking period afterwards.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: There is evidence out there on what works, and I think that one-to-one support piece is really, really crucial.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: It kind of links to quite a lot of what we were talking about at the collective, which is the role of trusted adults and that relational engagement piece and the fact that young people need someone in their corner.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's probably the one that I would emphasize the most, and the one that cannot be overstated.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then the other thing I would say is data collection and evaluation.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: So without knowing who these young people are, where they live, what barriers they're facing, it's very difficult to start thinking about solutions and interventions.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: And once we do get to the point of interventions, I think it's really important to evaluate how well these are working because there are plenty of programs out there, but there's only so much resource, so much money.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: We know that.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's really important to kind of continuously learn from what we're doing and see whether or not it's working, which is really at the heart of what we do.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Aisha.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's so powerful.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I really took away from the event earlier this week was some of the less tangible things are really important here.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: As a former policymaker, I was always thinking about the programs, the money, the levers, but actually it's that sense of belonging, that connection, the the attachment to place.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Those can be very, very powerful too.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're much less tangible, but they can really be pivotal in helping young people to kind of stay connected.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um so as we come to the end of uh this episode, uh, I wanted to just uh give you each a chance to share kind of one recommendation or one particular area of focus that you would flag up to the Melbourne Review team to kind of really get their teeth into in this next phase that's going to lead through to September.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, Lauren, what would you point them towards?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: So much.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: But quality, thinking about quality, what uh Aisha was just saying about the monitoring, the measuring, really supporting and thinking about what works.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: When I think about quality, it is ensuring as we move young people into work that there are quality opportunities for them to move into the rhetoric around the amount spent on getting young people into jobs versus welfare.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: I would also urge and recommend that we aren't quick to flip that too fast.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: We have to think about doing both of those things in tandem well before we pull anything away.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: But where these young people land in good quality opportunities to learn, earn, or progress has to be the strongest recommendation we have.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: They can't just go anywhere.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Lauren.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Aisha?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: I had a few, but I'll choose one.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think the one that I would probably most emphasize is the fact that it goes without saying that one million young people who are not in education, employment, or training is obviously very alarming.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: But I think what I found particularly concerning is that between 300 and 400,000 of those young people are not engaging with any services at all.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: So-called hidden neat young people who are not in the system of whom we've kind of completely lost track.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that's really important for the review to focus on.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: And a little plug for impetus here, we have a report coming out later this summer where we're going to be proposing quite an innovative way to engage these hidden neat young people.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Really good point.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: What a great conversation.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, things I've taken away, this really important point about early intervention and prevention, and and there's a lot of science behind that with risk of neat indicators and things now.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: We can do that really well.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that point that you've both made so well about personalization, this is a term that we use statistically, but each one of those young people is different, each one is going to need something different to help them to get back in.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that point about the role of trusted adults, I think that came up so strongly in the conversation this week in this podcast and in kind of everything that we've done in this space as potentially the way to unlock this.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: So Lauren Aisha, thank you so much for your time, and I think we'll all be looking with interest at what happens next with the Melbourne review.