Reducing the number of 16-18 year olds who are not in education, training or employment (NEET) has been a key target for the Connexions Service since inception, and recently a number of local authorities, including Manchester, have adopted it as a local Public Service Agreement target.
As a consequence, there has been a sharp rise in the amount of statistical information available on the NEET group. It is possible, for example, for Connexions to extract data by ward, by postcode, by qualifications, and by a range of characteristics which are recognised barriers to entering EET.
But there have been comparatively few studies which look at the aspirations and perceptions of NEET young people, or which attempt to examine the factors which might have prevented their becoming NEET in the first place.
In order to know more about the NEET, Connexions Manchester devised and distributed a questionnaire to 514 young people during May-July 2005. This sample represented around one-third of the NEET register and included recent school leavers as well as those who had been unemployed for several months.
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