There is an understandable appeal in the idea that we should identify, as early as possible, the children most likely to become NEET — not in education, employment or training.
If we can spot risk sooner, surely we can intervene sooner.
And we should get better at doing that.
Teachers often see things that matter. They notice when a child is struggling to communicate, regulate emotions, engage with learning, build relationships or attend regularly. They can see changes that may be invisible elsewhere. When those warning signs appear, the wider system should respond quickly and intelligently.
But there is a deeper problem with building prevention primarily around identification.
That distinction matters.
Because however good our systems become at spotting risk, we will never identify every child who will struggle later. Children develop. Circumstances change. Life happens. Some difficulties are visible early. Others are not. Some children will carry obvious risk factors and flourish. Others will appear to be doing well and encounter challenges years later that no register, algorithm or teacher could reasonably have predicted.
So the question cannot only be:
Which children are likely to struggle?
It also has to be:
What capacities would help every child navigate challenge, uncertainty, setbacks and change — whenever they arise?
That is where psychological fitness belongs.
Risk matters. But risk is not destiny.
We know there are factors associated with a greater likelihood of becoming NEET.
- Low attainment matters.
- Persistent absence matters.
- Poor mental health matters.
- Poverty matters.
- Special educational needs and disabilities matter.
- Family adversity matters.
- Care experience matters.
Understanding those patterns is important because they help us direct additional support and resources.
A child may have several recognised risk factors and go on to thrive.
Another may appear to have very few and later become disconnected from education, employment or training.
That is not because our data is useless.
It is because development is dynamic.
A five-year-old, a 12-year-old and an 18-year-old are not simply the same person at different points on a straight line.
- Their brain is developing.
- Their identity is developing.
- Their relationships are changing.
- Their sense of belonging changes.
- Their confidence changes.
- Their ability to regulate emotions develops.
- Their family circumstances may change.
- Their health may change.
- The opportunities available to them may change.
- The economy may change.
And sometimes life simply intervenes.
- A bereavement.
- Family breakdown.
- Illness.
- Bullying.
- A difficult transition.
- A failed exam.
- A college course that turns out to be wrong.
- An apprenticeship that disappears.
- A friendship group collapsing.
- A caring responsibility.
- A first job application rejected.
None of these necessarily exists when a child is five years old and somebody is assessing their future likelihood of becoming NEET.
Warning signs matter. But they are not the whole story.
The recent debate around Alan Milburn’s proposals has become polarised.
One argument says schools are already being asked to solve too many of society’s problems.
Another says teachers already see warning signs and the real failure is that the rest of the system does not act on what they know.
There is truth in both.
Teachers should not be expected to solve poverty, housing, health, unemployment or family adversity.
And when teachers identify a genuine concern, they should not be left holding it alone.
If a child is struggling with communication, there should be support.
If anxiety is driving absence, help should arrive before disengagement deepens.
If education, health and social care each hold part of the picture, those pieces should be joined together.
A better whole-system response is essential.
Our systems are naturally better at seeing children whose difficulties create something observable.
- Poor attendance creates a signal.
- Low attainment creates a signal.
- Behaviour creates a signal.
- A diagnosis creates a signal.
- A referral creates a signal.
But low hope may not.
Loss of confidence may not.
Feeling that you do not belong may not.
Quietly withdrawing may not.
Believing that education or work is “not for someone like me” may not.
Some children mask. Some adapt. Some choose carefully what they disclose. Some are coping adequately now but will face circumstances later that fundamentally alter their trajectory.
The hidden child is not always the visibly vulnerable child
This is an important lesson from many areas of children’s lives.
We know from mental health and suicide prevention that recognised risk factors exist, yet some young people who experience the most serious outcomes were not previously known to services or identified as being at high risk.
NEET is clearly a very different outcome.
But the underlying lesson matters.
A system can become highly sophisticated at recognising the indicators it knows to look for and still miss the child whose difficulty has not yet become visible.
That is why identification should inform prevention. It should not define it.
Care experience shows why probabilities are not destinies
Take children who grow up in care.
We know, as a group, that care-experienced young people face a greater risk of poorer educational and employment outcomes.
That evidence matters.
But imagine two young people with the same broad risk marker.
One experiences instability, repeated relationship loss, limited preparation for adulthood and an abrupt transition into unsupported independence.
Another experiences stable relationships, adults who continue to believe in them, good educational support, opportunities to develop confidence and agency, careful preparation for independent living and continued support beyond the point at which childhood services technically end.
The statistical risk may begin in the same place.
The developmental experience does not.
And the outcomes can be completely different.
A care-experienced young person can thrive, contribute and bring enormous richness, perspective and capability into adult life.
The risk factor was real.
But it was not destiny.
This is why the ecosystem around children matters so much.
The ecosystem is not only there to respond when things go wrong
This is where I think we need to go further than the current debate.
Much of our approach to children follows a familiar sequence:
Notice a problem.
Identify the child.
Assess the need.
Refer.
Intervene.
Sometimes that sequence is absolutely necessary.
But it means support often begins only once difficulty becomes sufficiently visible.
The adults and environments around children are not simply there to spot problems and refer them onwards.
They are part of how children develop.
Children learn how to regulate emotions partly through experiencing adults who can regulate themselves.
They learn what mistakes mean from the way adults respond to them.
They learn whether asking for help is safe by what happens when they try.
They build beliefs about themselves through thousands of ordinary interactions.
They develop confidence through doing difficult things, experiencing setbacks and discovering that they can recover.
They develop hope when adults help them understand that a blocked pathway is not necessarily the end of the goal.
They learn belonging by experiencing themselves as genuinely part of a family, classroom, club or community.
This happens before anyone fills in a referral form.
It happens every day.
This is the case for psychological fitness
Psychological fitness is not therapy.
It is not an intervention for children who have been identified as vulnerable.
And it is not another outcome against which schools should be held accountable.
It is the ongoing development of capacities that help human beings navigate life.
- To recognise and regulate emotions.
- To understand the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
- To recover after disappointment and failure.
- To adapt when circumstances change.
- To maintain connection.
- To seek help.
- To develop confidence through experience.
- To retain a sense of agency.
- To build hope and find alternative pathways when the first route closes.
These are not skills required only by children on a risk register.
They are human capabilities.
We do not teach literacy only to the children we predict will struggle to read.
We teach every child to read and provide additional support to those who need more.
Psychological development deserves the same logic.
Build the foundations for everyone.
Add more support where need emerges.
Provide specialist help where it is required.
Universal does not mean identical
This distinction matters.
A universal approach does not mean pretending all children have the same needs.
Some children face extraordinary disadvantage.
Some require far greater practical, educational, therapeutic or financial support.
Some will experience challenges that cannot and should not be addressed through psychological skills alone.
- Poverty is not solved by resilience.
- Poor housing is not solved by emotional regulation.
- A shortage of apprenticeships is not solved by optimism.
- Discrimination is not solved by confidence.
Structural problems require structural responses.
But that does not make psychological development irrelevant.
Young people still have to navigate the world they encounter.
They need opportunities.
They also need the capacities to make use of those opportunities, recover when routes close, seek support, adapt and keep moving.
Transitions are where this becomes particularly important
The debate around identifying future NEETs often focuses on what schools can spot early.
But many young people become disconnected much later.
- The move from primary to secondary school.
- From GCSEs into sixth form, college or an apprenticeship.
- From education into employment.
- From child to adult health services.
- From care into independent living.
- From a highly supported environment into one where the young person is suddenly expected to manage alone.
These transitions are not simply administrative moments.
They are developmental moments.
A young person may be academically capable and still struggle when structure disappears.
They may have been confident at school and lose that confidence after repeated rejection.
They may have imagined one pathway and discover it is no longer available.
This is precisely why psychological fitness cannot be a one-off programme delivered in childhood and considered finished.
It needs to develop over time.
And the ecosystem around the young person needs to remain connected.
So what would a different model look like?
We should absolutely get better at spotting warning signs.
We should use data well.
We should respond early.
We should join services together.
We should offer additional support where known risk factors tell us it may be needed.
But that should sit inside something bigger.
A stronger approach would:
- Develop psychological fitness universally throughout childhood and adolescence.
- Equip the adults around children to understand, model and reinforce those capacities.
- Strengthen belonging, relationships, hope and agency before they become clinical or behavioural concerns.
- Respond rapidly when circumstances or behaviour change.
- Provide targeted and specialist support when it is needed.
- Pay particular attention to transitions.
- Ensure there are meaningful educational, vocational and employment opportunities available at the other end.
We need to reverse the logic
Instead of beginning with:
Who is likely to become NEET?
What should we do for them?
We could begin with:
What helps a child regulate when life becomes difficult?
What helps them recover after disappointment?
What helps them adapt?
What helps them ask for help?
What helps them believe they can influence what happens next?
What helps them find another pathway when one route closes?
Then we develop those things throughout childhood.
For everyone.
And when we identify additional risk, we add additional support.
That is the difference between waiting for vulnerability to become visible and taking development seriously from the beginning.
We will never build a system capable of seeing every difficulty before it happens.
Nor should we conclude from that that identification does not matter.
It matters enormously.
Prevention cannot depend on our ability to predict which children will struggle.
Early intervention still starts with a problem. Development starts before it.
Psychological fitness — developed over time and reinforced by the ecosystem around every child — needs to become an ongoing part of the solution.
