More Southend young people working, learning or training
Published Thursday 22nd December 11 in Council - news and information releases news
Southend-on-Sea Borough Council has beaten its own targets and bucked national trends of growing numbers of young people not in education, employment or training, (NEET)
While national figures showed a worrying 19 per cent of 16 - 24 year olds counted as NEET in the third quarter of the year, Southend recorded just six per cent of 16 - 19 year olds in this category.
This even beat its own stringent local target of seven per cent.
The Council's Executive Councillor for Children and Learning, Councillor Mark Flewitt said: "The key to our success is our ambition that every single young person should be in meaningful employment education or training.
"All agencies and partners share this ambition and we work together to achieve it.
"The schools and colleagues offer advice and detailed guidance for all young people and the Connexions service works in partnership with them to ensure that every young person can be offered individual support with issues they may face.
"The wide variety of apprenticeship schemes across the town have really supported ensuring young people are not out of work, as has the role that all employers are playing to help Southend weather these difficult times.'
Meanwhile, figures from the Department for Education show that 1,163,000 16- to 24-year-olds - or 19 per cent of the age group - were NEET in the third quarter of 2011.
This is up from 1,026,000 in the same quarter last year, or 17 per cent of the cohort.