How Do We Keep Britain Working: When Economic Inactivity Due to Ill Health Costs the UK £212 Billion Per Year? FE Soundbite 822
Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 822: 8th November 2025. How Do We Keep Britain Working: When Economic Inactivity Due to Ill Health Costs the UK £212 Billion per Year?
NEBOSH is sponsoring this week’s Soundbite
This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal by FE News: ISSN 2732-4095. We know life is busy, so here’s a snapshot of the latest announcements and epic thought leadership articles from sector influencers and thought leaders across FE and Skills this week on FE News.
Soundbite Sponsor Spotlight
The Changing Learner Landscape: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities
Tim Oates CBE unveils new research this Thursday 13th November at 1-2pm, where he will be exploring how 16-25 year-olds want to learn in 2024.
Supported by NEBOSH and the Federation of Awarding Bodies, Tim’s report combines multiple strands of evidence revealing critical shifts in learner expectations and behaviours. Discover what young people really want from skills training, which assessment strategies are working across Europe, and the key trends that will shape technical and vocational education over the next decade. This is essential for anyone working with learners or planning provision in our evolving landscape.
Gavin’s Reflective Perspective
I am saying it every week at the moment.. but another wave of announcements, all seeming isolated, but when you step back, they are very much interconnected to the bigger picture.
Keep Britain Working
This for me is massive and this came out on the same day as the Curriculum and Assessment Review (and seems to be a bit overlooked and in my mind is much more significant in findings and urgency). 60 major employers, SMEs, mayor authorities are coming together in response to Sir Charlie Mayfield’s Keep Britain Working Review.
The overall cost to the state of economic inactivity due to ill health, is £212 Billion per year!
The Mayfield Review / Keep Britain Working Review found that:
One in five working-age adults are now out of the labour force, this is 800,000 more than in 2019, all due to health reasons! The cost of ill-health that prevents work equals 7% of GDP, which is nearly 70% of all income-tax receipts! The overall cost to the state of economic inactivity due to ill health (across all working ages, not just NEETs) is an estimated £212 billion per year.
The economic cost to Employers is also massive: employers lose £85 billion a year from sickness, turnover, and lost productivity. The report also highlighted and benchmarked the UK compared to different nations and employment among disabled people stands at 53%, below leading OECD nations.
The Individual Lifetime Cost of Economic Inactivity Due to Ill Health is £1 Million
The Individual Cost: The Keep Britain Working report also highlighted and gave the example that if a 22-year-old who leaves the workforce due to ill health could lose over £1 million in lifetime earnings, with the state incurring similar costs in lost tax revenues and increased welfare payments… this is MASSIVE!
Keep Britain Working and NEET Economic Inactivity
When you add the Keep Britain Working figures together with the latest ONS NEETs data (from August 2025, which shows there are 948,000 NEETs), the ONS also highlighted: back in August 2025 that there are 583,000 economically inactive NEETs (up 14,000 on the quarter). This surely highlights that more support needs to be in place for NEETs, especially if economic inactivity due to ill health costs the state £1M each in their lifetime. This is massive and surely needs money flowing in to tackle this, not a cut or reduction in the upcoming budget!
Joining the Dots
The Mayfield Review / Keep Britain Working, comes literally a week after the Pathway to Work Consultation from DWP. The Government has mentioned black holes in their finances, those noises and terms are becoming more frequent as the Budget is coming up in three weeks … but erm, a £212 Billion cost PER YEAR, on economic inactivity due to ill health … this is massive.
CAR – Curriculum and Assessment Review
On the same day as Keep Britain Working, we had the Curriculum and Assessment Review (which has received a lot more attention from a lot of people in the sector). We have a wide-angle view of the Curriculum and Assessment Review with a Sector reaction piece from different stakeholders across the sector. So more from CAR on V Levels (which was the big announcement a few weeks ago), more SEND support, particularly the recognition that there is a need for greater flexibility in the curriculum to support schools and colleges with SEND reforms and the inclusion agenda.
SEND – from CAR to the Collective
SEND had a massive mention in the Curriculum and Assessment Review, so if you want to help shape the future of SEND and Neuro inclusion support, join us at the SEND Collective on the 12th February in London (in partnership with ETF). We ‘walked the venue‘ this week for the London SEND Collective, it is going to be awesome!
I hope you enjoy FE Soundbite this week!
Epic Exclusives Thought Leadership Articles
Our Top 3 Thought Leadership Articles This Week
Industry Placements: The Bridge Between Education and Employment By Dr Vikki Smith, Executive Director, Education and Standards, Education Training Foundation
Beyond the Skills Gap: How EdTech Can Help Balance Growth and Autonomy By Vikki Liogier an Education and Digital Capability Consultant
From Masking to Belonging: Tackling Shame in Neurodivergent FE Culture By Nathan Whitbread, The Neurodivergent Coach
This week, we also had some other Epic Exclusives!
Post 16 Skills White Paper? Back to the Future – Part 1 By Gill Scott, Director and Senior Consultant at Gill Scott Consultancy Ltd
From S’mores to Sustainable Systems: One Year as a Green Changemaker in Further Education By Craig McCauley, Curriculum Development Lead and Green Changemaker, Solihull College & University Centre
Dual Education Models: A New Blueprint for Aligning Learning and Work By Andriy Pereymybida, Talent Acceleration Center Director, SoftServe and Mariia Rashkevych, Global University Alliances Manager, SoftServe
Unlocking potential through applied learning: Why investment in FE must go further By Sarah Porretta, CEO, Young Enterprise
What’s New in the World of FE?
Announcements
Curriculum and Assessment Review Calls for High Standards By the Department for Education (DfE)
Government Responds to the Curriculum and Assessment Review By the Department for Education (DfE)
The Role of Data on School and FE Inspections By Ofsted
Employers Join Forces With Government To Tackle ill-health And Keep Britain Working By the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
Reports
Post-pandemic leap in lifelong learning appears over, as national survey finds free falling participation rates By the Learning and Work Institute
Voices
‘Martyn’s Law’: Planning for Success By Stephen O’Connell, Commercial Manager, Netgenium
After the White Paper, Don’t Forget the Glue that Makes Skills Deliverable By Ed Fidoe, CEO and co-founder, London Interdisciplinary School (LIS)
In The Know
Join us on Feb 12th in London for our SEND collective intelligence event (we walked the venue this week and it is going to be awesome). Join us! Where you’ll co-create strategies and policy recommendations alongside sector leaders. This isn’t lectures, it’s rolling up sleeves and making real change. This isn’t just SEND, this is Neuro inclusion and breaking down the silos to help every learner, not just 16-18, but all life long. This is a massively important Collective, so help shape the report!
We hope you enjoy FE Soundbite this week. Stay curious, keep innovating, and let’s shake up the world of FE together, and catch you next week!
By Danny O’Meara, Operations Manager, FE News and