Almost 1/5th of Britain’s young people do absolutely nothing
April 17th, 2007 by Ed SingletonAn interesting response to a Telegraph article here. Apparently there are huge numbers of young people doing absolutely nothing. Are there really huge numbers of people who will happily spend their lives doing nothing? Should we just let them do it?
The article, and the Government define ‘doing nothing as ‘not in education, employment or training’. Is that fair? Aren’t there lot’s of us outside of those institutions who are still busy doing something?
April 17th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I would reply but i can’t be bothered.
seriously though - I have heard people say that the NEET measurement is pretty flimsy and there is lots of activity that goes missing within it - e.g. volunteering, gap years etc. There is apparently a more thorough measure for this in Japan where i think we got the concept from.
Wonder whether start-ups are counted in this too?
But - do agree there is a serious problem. But just keeping these kids in education is not the answer because schools fiddle with the figures to increase their incomes. we need to find more opportunities for young people to find (legal) things that they want to do in their lives.