The Careers and Enteprise Company has launched a set of resources which will be of use to any of our partners supporting young people’s engagement with school.
The Company is particularly interested in youth mentoring: an intervention which they have been able to show has a well evidenced impact on school engagement.
The set of resources includes a literature review of the evidence base for youth mentoring and a description of what it looks like, a definition of youth disengagement and suggested indicators for measuring it, and a map of areas (by LEP) categorised according to the level of risk of youth disengagement.
The map allows you to see how likely young people are in your area to become disengaged. Of Blagrave areas, only East Sussex falls into a LEP categorised as in the third quartile of their disengagement index (the fourth quartile being the most likely), Swindon and Wiltshire and Solent are in the second quartile leaving areas falling in the Enterprise M3 and Coast to Capital LEPs as least vulnerable. Of course, we know that any categorisation at such a high level masks a great deal of local complexity and variation.
The Careers and Enterprise Company has opened a call for funding for organisations who are ambitious about improving young people’s outcomes through employer mentoring programmes. £12m is available across England over 4 years and allocations to each area have been made on the basis of the mapping. The deadline for applications to the Careers and Enterprise Mentoring Fund is 19 August.
Tessa Hibbert July 2016