Education and Skills Bill
10:58 am
Anne Pinney: You are absolutely right, disengagement begins well before 16 and if we think of this as a reform for only 16 to 18-year-olds, it will not work. It needs to be in the context of reform of the 14-to-19 curriculum, but also a much wider look at support structures all the way through school. Something that Barnardo’s recommends, which comes directly from the young people in our projects, is the need for key workers in secondary schools and colleges to give young people someone fairly independent whom they can talk to in confidence who can help them to access the support they need. They did not feel it was appropriate to talk to teaching staff, but they were dealing with such pressure outside school that they simply could not engage in the classroom effectively.