Almost 1 million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training. These so-called Neets – aged 16 to 24 – face a significantly higher risk of long-term unemployment, poor health and involvement in crime.
The proportion of 16- to 17-year-olds who are Neet is now higher than when the participation age was raised in 2014, requiring young people in England to stay in education or training until 18. The government has launched an inquiry into why so many are falling out of work and study.
Most research into this problem has focused on the characteristics of individual young people: low exam results, high absenteeism, socio-economic disadvantage. These factors matter, of course. But in our new research, we asked a different question: do the characteristics of the school itself make a difference to whether its leavers end up Neet?
The answer, it turns out, is yes – and it may have a lot to do with school culture and inclusivity.
We analysed publicly available data from over 3,000 secondary schools in England across three academic years, tracking how many of their school leavers dropped out of education or training within six months of finishing their GCSEs. Using statistical models, we controlled for factors like deprivation, special educational needs and prior attainment so we could isolate what the school environment itself was contributing.
Five school characteristics stood out. Schools with lower suspension rates, higher “Progress 8” scores (a government measure of how much academic progress students make during secondary school), and their own sixth form or post-16 provision all had a lower risk of students becoming Neet. Single-sex and faith schools also showed lower rates. Together with our control variables, these characteristics explained over 80% of the variation in dropout rates between schools.
We believe these characteristics may be markers of how inclusive a school is. Take suspensions. The rate at which schools suspend students varies enormously – in our sample, some schools barely used suspensions at all, while others issued the equivalent of nearly four per student per year.
Research shows that schools with the lowest suspension rates tend to have a more supportive culture, with clear strategies for keeping students connected rather than pushing them away. High suspension rates, by contrast, may signal an environment where some students feel they don’t belong.
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Progress 8 tells a similar story. Schools where students make more progress than expected tend to be those investing in all their pupils, not just the high achievers. Research has linked high progress scores to a growth mindset among staff and effective professional development – hallmarks of a school that works hard for every student.
Previous research has found that many young people who become Neet feel lost and confused about what to do after their GCSEs. Having a sixth form on site may provide a default pathway – a familiar option for students who might otherwise drift away. Not every school can offer this, but strengthening partnerships between schools without sixth forms and local colleges could achieve something similar.
Faith and single-sex schools may benefit from a stronger sense of shared identity between students, staff and families, which research suggests fosters a feeling of belonging. That said, these schools can also have socio-economic advantages we couldn’t fully account for, so this finding should be interpreted with some caution.
Even after accounting for all the factors in our model, there was still meaningful variation between individual schools. Some had less than half the average rate of students becoming Neet; others had more than double. This tells us that something about individual schools – their ethos, their relationships, their everyday practices – is shaping young people’s futures in ways that go beyond what we can capture in published statistics.
Our study can’t prove that these school characteristics directly cause lower Neet rates. We are working with associations, not experiments. But the patterns are consistent, they hold up across three years of data covering the whole of England, and they align with a growing body of qualitative evidence about what makes schools effective.
The government has rightly made school inclusion a priority, and our findings support that direction. Rethinking zero-tolerance behaviour policies, investing in restorative approaches (which focus on building connections), and ensuring every young person has a clear and supported pathway after their GCSEs could all make a real difference. Nearly a million young lives hang in the balance – and schools have more power to help than we might have assumed.
