Olly Newton: Why Systems Thinking Is The Key To Breaking Barriers For 1 Million Young People

We catch up with Olly Newton, Executive Director of the Edge Foundation at the Breaking Barriers Collective, a joint collective intelligence event in partnership with Edge Foundation and FE News, looking at breaking barriers into youth employment and engagement and holistically tackling the NEET puzzle.

With 1 million young people now classified as NEET, and the Alan Milburn interim review setting out the scale of the challenge, Olly shares his thinking on what would genuinely unlock more opportunities for young people. He looks at some of the biggest barriers to sustainable work and makes the case for rethinking the school curriculum, baking in more vocational pathways and real work experience opportunities from an earlier stage. He also reflects on the critical transition from school into college and the role that trusted adult advisors play in helping young people navigate their entry into the world of work.

Olly then turns to the bigger picture, exploring how different Government departments can work together in a more joined-up, holistic way. He highlights some immediate short-term changes that could make a real difference, including rethinking the benefits system so it encourages rather than discourages young people into work. As he points out, parts of the current system can negatively affect household income when a young person starts earning, which creates the wrong incentives at exactly the wrong moment.

Looking further ahead, Olly reflects on Milburn’s longer-term vision for systemic change, acknowledging that the real impact may take five to ten years to land. He highlights cross-Government collaboration as the key to making that happen and shares an encouraging observation from the Breaking Barriers Collective itself: that he has rarely seen so many policymakers from so many different departments in the same room, genuinely listening and working together to find new flexibilities for young people.

Check out the full video interview below:

The Breaking Barriers Collective was a joint Edge Foundation and FE News collective intelligence event. Thank you to OAL, our media sponsor, for supporting the video and mixed media outputs from the event.

You can also watch Praful Nargund, Skills Adviser to the Work and Pensions Secretary, share his reflections from Breaking Barriers here