NEWS

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is meant to be a hopeful question. It is meant to open doors, but for a lot of children, it does not land like hope. It lands like pressure, or like a trick question, or like something that belongs to other people. When you are worried about food, heating, rent, uniforms, bus fares, or whether your mum is going to make it to payday, your brain does not float into the future, it locks onto the present. It does what it was built to do.

So, if a child answers, “I don’t know”, or “nothing”, or “I just want money”, or even, “I don’t want to be hungry”, that is not a lack of ambition. That is reality speaking. Poverty changes what feels possible. Aspiration is not just imagination. It is imagination plus safety.

I have been thinking about a kind of inequality we do not talk about enough, because it is not always obvious, and it does not always look like money. It looks like a parent who can send a quick message. It looks like: “Oh, my friend’s sister works there”, or “let me introduce you to someone”. It looks like a door opening, quietly, without anyone having to beg. And once you notice it, you cannot unsee it.

Some young people grow up surrounded by working adults who can explain the rules. They hear the language of work at the dinner table. They learn what different jobs look like, what they pay, and what the next step is. They learn how to write an email that gets a reply, how to walk into a room and feel like they belong, and how to ask for an opportunity without feeling like a nuisance. That is social capital. It is not a buzzword. It is the difference between feeling like the world of work is something you can enter, or something you can only read about. Here is the bit that gets me. Parent networks do not just help; they multiply.

There is a quiet gap in careers education that too many people accept as normal. Work experience.

For lots of children and young people with SEND, it is not a stepping stone. It is a locked door and then, years later, we act surprised when they show up in the NEET figures. The missing rung on the ladder.

Work experience is not a “nice extra”. It is where confidence grows. It is where a young person learns what a workplace feels like, how to ask for help, how to recover after a mistake, and how to see themselves as someone who belongs. But for SEND learners, access is often shaped by fear. Fear of risk. Fear of safeguarding. Fear of insurance. Fear of “what if it goes wrong?”. So, the safest option becomes the default option. No placement. Or a placement that is not real work. Or a placement that is offered only to the young people who already look “easy”. Not included in guidance, not protected in practice.

NEET is one of those words that can sound tidy. It stands for not in education, employment, or training. It is used in reports, funding bids, and policy conversations. It is often said like it is a category you can file people into. But if you have ever met someone who is NEET, you will know the truth. NEET is not a personality type. It is not a lack of effort. It is not a moral failing. It is a snapshot. A moment in time. And behind it are real people, with real stories, who are usually carrying far more than the label suggests.

There is a particular kind of courage in opening your laptop, looking at a blank CV, and trying to explain a gap that was never really a gap.

Because if you have been NEET (not in education, employment or training) for a long time as a mother, you have not been doing nothing. You have been doing everything. You have been running a household, carrying the mental load, and keeping other people alive and well. You have been making a thousand decisions a day, most of them invisible, and most of them urgent.

I grew up around the idea that a career was something you picked.

You chose a lane, you trained for it, and if you worked hard enough, you stayed in it. For life. You built a life around a job title that made sense to other people. But more and more, when I talk to young people, teachers, and parents, that story does not fit.

It sounds like a simple question. It is anything but because the honest answer is not a neat job title. It is not “doctor” or “plumber” or “teacher” or “engineer” tied up with a bow. The honest answer is this: some of the jobs we are pointing them towards today will not look the same by the time they finish school. Some might not exist at all.

If you are a teacher, you will have felt that shift in the room. If you are a parent, you will have carried it quietly, like a stone in your pocket. And if you are a young person, you will have heard the noise online, watched the headlines, and wondered if there is any point trying.