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<p>Under the 2008 Education and Skills Act, local authorities have a statutory duty
to identify and track participation of 16 and 17-year-olds in education or employment
with training, to support those who are not participating to do so, and to make sure
there is sufficient, suitable education and training provision to meet their needs.
Local authorities also have a duty to work with schools to identify those young people
who need targeted support or who are at risk of not participating post-16. Alongside
this, they must lead the September Guarantee process which guarantees all young people
a suitable place in further education at the end of years 11 and 12.</p><p>In line
with these duties, where a young person is identified as ‘Not in Education, Employment
and Training’ (NEET), the local authority has a responsibility to work with them.
Similarly, where a young person’s destination is identified as ‘not known’, the local
authority must continue to try to locate and contact the young person through various
routes.</p><p>Local authorities may choose to organise their tracking of young people
in a variety of ways; however, all local authorities have a duty to submit monthly
data to the Department for Education’s ‘National Client Caseload Information System’
(NCCIS). This data is then published by the department, throughout the year in various
publications, for transparency purposes.</p><p>The department publishes the NEET scorecard
annually, which pulls together all of the NCCIS data published throughout the previous
year and other relevant data. The scorecard ranks local authorities into 5 groups
based on their performance on the percentage of 16 and 17-year-olds NEET and whose
activity is not known. The department actively performance manages those local authorities
in the bottom group. These actions can vary from engagement at official level, meetings
and ministerial letters.</p><p>As this year’s scorecard has yet to be published, it
will not be possible to confirm at this time exactly what action will be taken with
individual local authorities. However, as local authority groups will be based on
the NCCIS NEET and participation data, published on 20 June 2019[1], which shows that
Lancashire County Council’s NEET and not known percentage is 10%, of which 8% were
not known, which is above the North West average of 3.2% and the England average of
2.9%, it is likely that performance management action will be taken in relation to
Lancashire local authority.</p><p>The department’s performance management approach
has worked well in the past, with the majority of the local authorities contacted
achieving improvements in their submitted data. Where improvements are not achieved,
in a reasonable timeframe, the department follows up at official level with formal
meetings to agree action plans and deadlines for improvement.</p><p> </p><p>[1] NEET
and Participation Local Authority Figures: <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neet-and-participation-local-authority-figures"
target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neet-and-participation-local-authority-figures</a>.</p>
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