Ordinary lives: an ethnographic study of young people attending Entry to Employment programmes

Abstract

This paper discusses the findings from a one-year ethnographic study of young people attending Entry to Employment (E2E) programmes in two local authorities in the north of England. The paper locates E2E within the broader context of provision for low-achieving young people and of UK government policy on reducing the proportion of young people who are not in education, employment or training. Although discourses associated with these categories of young people often present them in negative terms, the paper shows that this type of conceptualisation is inadequate to understand the lives of young people on the margins of education and employment. The paper also finds that the success of E2E in improving employability is mixed. The programme helps young people to improve their confidence, basic skills and personal effectiveness, as well as provides opportunities to acquire qualifications. However, employability is also linked to broader social and economic factors. Although E2E can help young people gain employment, particularly in relatively low-skill areas of work, in adverse economic conditions, the programme is unlikely to offer participants a labour market advantage.

Keywords:

• NEET
• vocational training
• youth unemployment
• work-based learning
• employability
• ethnography

Notes

1. Introduced in England in 2001 as a more holistic replacement for the local-authority-run career services, Connexions offers advice and guidance to young people aged 13–19 through personal advisers (PAs) based in a variety of settings. Although career work is a primary focus, Connexions also aims to provide guidance on other issues, such as drug misuse, teenage pregnancy and youth offending. From its inception, Connexions has had a particular remit to reduce the proportion of young people who are NEET (Yates and Payne 2006).

2. EMA is a means-tested benefit of up to £30 weekly available to young people attending eligible learning programmes in England (Maguire and Rennison 2005). As part of public expenditure reductions by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government formed in May 2010, EMA was discontinued for new applicants from January 2011 and will cease for existing recipients at the end of the academic year 2010–2011.

3. Following widespread practice in lifelong learning, we use the term ‘learner’ to describe participants in E2E programmes. However, we do not endorse the ideology underlying the term, and it is notable that some E2E ‘learners’ referred to themselves as students.