The lessons in handshaking and eye contact preparing pupils for the world of work

Schools and colleges across England are legally required to have a careers programme, including expanded opportunities for work experience, and to use the updated Gatsby Benchmarks, external to structure their careers education.

The Gatsby Foundation’s Beth Jones, who developed the guidance, says the more careers education benchmarks a school achieves, the less likely it is their students will leave as Neet.

“Careers guidance cannot solve every barrier young people face, but it is an important part of helping them navigate their futures successfully,” she says.

There is no doubt that improving careers education and giving pupils more vocational options is part of the plan for schools, but it is not the whole picture for solving the Neet crisis.

As Milburn himself pointed out in his interim report, external earlier this year, from the moment a child arrives at school at age four, the system can predict “who is most likely to fail”.

A child starting school without basic “school-ready” skills like potty training at ages four or five is nearly three times as likely to be Neet by the time they reach 16 or 17 years old.

Pupils with special educational needs, from poorer backgrounds, or those with mental health issues are also more likely to be Neet.

The problem might not be identifying the pupils that need help, but finding the funding to help them. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warned that a “one-size-fits-all approach” to the Neet crisis was “unlikely to work, given the very different circumstances of young people who are Neet”.

It says a “key question for the government will be how much they are willing to invest in the short run in the hope of a pay-off in future years”.