Across eight months in 2025-26, the government has published a skills white paper, a curriculum review, and an independent inquiry into the NEET crisis.
“The structure that’s built into the professional environment and even the personal environment of this country is built for a generation that’s gone past. It’s not adapting to what we need.”[1]
Those are not the words of an education reformer or a technology entrepreneur. They are the words of a young person from London interviewed as part of Alan Milburn’s government-commissioned inquiry into why nearly one million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training. Published last week, it is the most comprehensive examination of youth disengagement Britain has ever conducted. Its conclusion is clear: this is not a failure of young people. It is a failure of institutions and policy built for a world that no longer exists.[1]
Read alongside the Post-16 Education and Skills white paper from October 2025 and the Curriculum and Assessment Review from November 2025, the Milburn report completes a picture that is both damning and clarifying. Three major government documents in eight months, and not one of them, across hundreds of pages of evidence and recommendations, mentions online schools. That silence is no longer just an oversight. It is a spectacular government policy blind spot.
A Crisis We Can Now Quantify
At the end of 2025, 957,000 young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were not in education, employment or training.[1] If they formed a city, it would be the third largest in the country. Larger than Leeds, Glasgow or Cardiff.[1] The NEET rate has fallen below 10% only once in 25 years.[1] It is forecast to reach 16%, or more than 1.25 million young people, within five years if nothing changes.[1] The cumulative annual cost to the country exceeds what Britain spends on education each year.[1] For the individuals affected, the personal cost is permanent: a 24-year-old who has spent time NEET is projected to lose up to £300,000 in lifetime earnings.[1]
By 2025, only Romania recorded a higher youth NEET rate than the UK among comparable European countries.[1] The Netherlands stands at 4.1%. Denmark at 8.4%. Britain at 12.8% and rising.[1] Milburn’s conclusion is stark: “The institutions we built to support young people into adulthood are no longer fit for that purpose.”[1]
What young people themselves say about the system is equally telling. In Milburn’s survey, 81% of NEET young people believe the curriculum is too focused on passing exams.[1] Sixty-seven per cent felt school failed to prepare them for work.[1] Careers guidance was “widely described as generic and lacking practical value.”[1] Work experience had shifted almost entirely onto families meaning, as one Newcastle stakeholder observed, it now “relies on who your parents know.”[1] Social mobility is becoming a distant dream.
The Conveyer Belt To Nowhere
The Milburn report makes a finding the education debate has almost entirely failed to absorb: for many young people who end up NEET, disengagement “did not begin at 16 or 17, but much earlier, sometimes as early as Year 7.”[1] By the time they leave school, they are already pre-NEET: detached, carrying mental health needs that were never addressed, holding qualifications that bear little relation to their actual ability. Students persistently absent from school are 3.9 times more likely to be NEET.[1] Persistent absences have risen more than 70% since the pandemic.[1] Severe absence has nearly trebled.[1]
Nowhere is this failure more visible than in the experience of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Nearly half of all NEET young people – 45% – now report having a disability, more than double the proportion a decade ago.[1] Young people with SEND are around 80% more likely to be NEET than average.[1] The NEET rate for disabled young people stands at 29.6%, against 8.7% for non-disabled peers – a gap of nearly 21 percentage points that has barely moved in ten years.[1] Among those with neurodevelopmental conditions including autism and learning difficulties, the picture is worsening sharply: 12.3% of NEET young people in England now record these as their primary condition, up from 7.7% in 2021 alone.[1]
For children whose brains work differently, the mainstream school environment is not merely inadequate. Despite the best efforts of under-resourced schools and committed teachers, support staff, and senior leaders, it is frequently the source of the disengagement itself. The November curriculum review acknowledged that SEND pupils make less progress and recommended making mainstream schools more inclusive.[3] What it did not ask – what none of these documents asks – is whether a fundamentally different model might serve these children better than an adapted version of the one already failing them.
The Incoherence at the Heart of Policy
Set the three documents side by side and a structural contradiction emerges that goes beyond any individual omission.
The Skills white paper is urgent and clear: AI will disrupt the labour market, 26 million workers will need to upskill in the next decade,[2] and the government has committed to upskilling 7.5 million workers with AI skills by 2030.[2] Skills shortage vacancies now account for more than a quarter of all job openings.[2] Flexible, personalised learning is the essential response. Six weeks later, the Curriculum and Assessment Review – self-described as taking an approach of “evolution not revolution”[3] – broadly maintained the Victorian architecture of key stages and GCSEs and engaged with AI primarily as a threat to exam integrity. These government reports simultaneously acknowledge the need for a skills revolution and protect an educational system completely ill-equipped to deliver one.
Milburn adds a further layer the other two documents missed entirely: the labour market has changed in ways that credentials alone cannot navigate. Recruitment has become “more remote, more automated and less human.”[1] Apprenticeship starts for young people have declined by more than 40%.[1] And 40% of NEET young people in 2024/25 held qualifications at A-level or above.[1] Nearly 30% had good GCSEs.[1] The system gave them credentials. But it did not give them the ability to navigate hiring processes. As one young graduate described it: “I wasn’t making it past the HireVue stages” – having applied to dozens of companies without meeting a single human being.[1] Sixty-four per cent of NEET young people identified speaking skills and communication as the thing most likely to improve their employment prospects.[1] The exam system – on which schools are measured and judged by government – simply does not prioritise oracy.
The Technology Already Solving This
Nowhere in any of these three documents does the government ask whether there’s a solution to these complex and multifaceted problems that’s already working.
Online schools are a solution – not for everyone. But delivering for a significant minority – that policymakers have failed to look for. Perhaps because the Department for Education believes independent schools = bad and has therefore failed to consider the possibility of best practice and innovation delivering outcomes relevant to the NEET agenda emerging in the independent schools’ sector.
More than 30,000 UK students are now enrolled full-time in accredited online schools, with numbers projected to double within five years.[4] The UK EdTech sector has grown 72% in recent years.[4] And the outcomes are striking: in 2024, 75% of online school students achieved A*-B grades at A-level, compared with 50% in traditional schools.[4]
“The students coming to us aren’t a niche group and online schooling is no longer just a last resort. Alongside the children who are desperate to escape mainstream schooling, we’re seeing a surge in families opting for a more bespoke education as a lifestyle choice. Studying online gives you the chance to fit your education around travel, training, work experience and extra-curricular interests, while coming out with higher academic results.”[5] – Heather Rhodes, Highgrove Education
The population these schools serve maps directly onto the groups the Milburn report identifies as most at risk. Children with ADHD, autism spectrum conditions, and anxiety find in flexible, personalised online learning the conditions in which they can often thrive. Children of globally mobile families, elite young athletes and performers, and a growing cohort of families who have looked at what traditional schooling offers and chosen something demonstrably better – all of them are finding that the “pre-NEET” pipeline Milburn traces so carefully is, in online education, being interrupted before it begins. Home education in England jumped 15% to 175,900 children in 2024/25.[4] The UK online education market is projected to reach US$11.68 billion in 2025.[6] The Education Endowment Foundation has found that when digital tools are deployed effectively, they accelerate learning by two to five months.[7]
“Our families share a need for more flexibility than the traditional model can offer, and an appetite for doing things differently.”[5] – Heather Rhodes, Highgrove Education
Look at what the best online schools teach and the contrast with the state sponsored national curriculum becomes pointed. Alongside rigorous academic subjects, students at schools like Highgrove Education choose from elective courses in AI for Creativity, AI for Problem Solving, and AI for Information – the practical digital fluency the Skills white paper identifies as a national priority, but which the curriculum review declined to mandate. They can study Entrepreneurship, Introduction to Investment, Financial Asset Management, Sports Psychology, and Emotional Intelligence. A dedicated Neuroinclusion programme – Neuro Navigators – treats neurodivergent experience not as a deficit to be managed within a system that was never designed for it, but as a dimension of human capability to be understood and built upon.[8]
Bridging The Gap Between Education And Employment
Even the best education often does not complete the journey to a meaningful career. Milburn is forensic about what happens at the point of entry to the labour market: AI-screened applications, multi-stage automated assessments, recorded video interviews – all before a young person meets a human being. The aspiration is not the problem. Eighty-four per cent of NEET young people said they want to find a job, education or training.[1] Sixty-seven per cent said work would give them stability.[1][9] The barrier is not motivation. It is the gap between who they are and what the modern hiring process can see.
That transition requires deliberate, expert, individually tailored support: knowing how AI screening works and how to pass it, building STAR-framework responses in the language employers use, learning to present a coherent professional identity under real interview conditions. For neurodivergent young people navigating these processes without preparation, the challenge is not their capability. It is that the system was not designed for them – and nobody has taught them how to navigate it anyway.
So When Will Online Schools Finally Inspire Those In Power?
Britain has now spent eight months documenting its education and youth employment crisis with increasing precision. The annual cost of 957,000 NEET young people exceeds what we spend on education.[1] The NEET rate is forecast to hit 1.25 million within five years.[1] Only Romania performs worse.[1]
And yet, across all three government documents, the model already delivering flexible, personalised, skills-relevant education, already producing superior academic outcomes, already serving the children most at risk of disengagement, and already teaching AI, entrepreneurship, and emotional intelligence, is completely invisible.
Online schools are proof of concept for what the government says it wants to build. They are technology genuinely in service of social good: not as an abstraction, but as a lived reality for tens of thousands of British children who were failed by a system built for a generation that has gone past. The question is not whether they work. The evidence is clear. The question is when a government that commissioned three landmark reports – and somehow missed all of this – is finally going to see online schools for the powerhouse that they are?
Author Bio – Sandra Davis
Sandra Davis is a careers and employability specialist, Chartered Manager Fellow, licensed Morrisby practitioner and founder of OneBigNext. With over 30 years’ experience across education, leadership and technology, she supports young people aged 13–25, including neurodiverse young people, to navigate the transition into meaningful careers. Through OneBigNext, Sandra helps young people secure degree apprenticeships, internships and early-career roles by developing the skills, understanding and labour market insight they need to bridge the gap between education and employment.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-davis-uk/
https://www.youtube.com/@onebignext
References
[1] Milburn, A. (2026). Young People and Work: Interim Report. Independent Report commissioned by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Department for Work and Pensions. Published 28 May 2026. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/young-people-and-work-interim-report
[2] HM Government (2025). Post-16 Education and Skills. CP 1412. Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Education, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. October 2025. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/post-16-education-and-skills-white-paper. Note: The figure of 26 million workers requiring upskilling is drawn from Confederation of British Industry (2020), Learning for Life, as cited in the white paper at footnote 28.
[3] Francis, B. (Chair) (2025). Curriculum and Assessment Review: Building a World-Class Curriculum for All – Final Report. Department for Education. November 2025. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/curriculum-and-assessment-review-final-report. The phrase “evolution not revolution” appears in the Review’s Conclusion section.
[4] Online schools market data drawn from the following sources: (a) Enrolment figures and growth projections: Independent Schools Council (ISC) Annual Census 2025 and Ofsted registered provider data, as compiled in internal research. (b) UK EdTech sector growth (72%): BESA (British Educational Suppliers Association) / Nesta EdTech report data, as referenced in project research materials. (c) A-level outcomes (75% A*–B online vs 50% national average): Comparative data published by accredited online school providers and UCAS/JCQ national A-level results 2024. (d) Home education figures (175,900 children, +15% in 2024/25): Department for Education, Elective Home Education Statistics, England, 2024/25.
[5] Rhodes, H. (2025). Quote provided by Heather Rhodes, Principal, Highgrove Education, for use in editorial and media contexts. Highgrove Education is an Ofsted-registered accredited online school operating in the United Kingdom.
[6] Statista Market Insights (2026). Online Education – United Kingdom: Market Forecast. Statista GmbH. Most recent update: April 2026. Available at: https://www.statista.com/outlook/emo/online-education/united-kingdom [Accessed May 2026]. Revenue projection of US$11.68 billion relates to the total UK Online Education market segment for 2025.
[7] Education Endowment Foundation (2024). Teaching and Learning Toolkit: Digital Technology. EEF. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/digital-technology. The EEF Toolkit rates the use of digital technology as accelerating learning by an average of +4 months, with a range of 2–5 months when implemented effectively.
[8] Highgrove Education (2025). Elective Subject Catalogue 2025–26. Highgrove Education. The full elective curriculum includes AI for Creativity, AI for Information, AI for Problem Solving, Entrepreneurship, Introduction to Investment, Financial Asset Management, Emotional Intelligence, Sports Psychology, and the Neuroinclusion programme, Neuro Navigators, among others.
[9] The King’s Trust (2025). Youth Index 2025. The King’s Trust. Available at: https://www.kings-trust.org.uk/about-the-trust/research-and-policy/youth-index. Figures cited in the Milburn report (2026), Chapter 2, paragraph 204: 67% of NEET young people say work would give them stability; 53% say it would be good for their mental health.
