Post-16 education and training providers need to offer greater levels of support to returning students, in particular young mothers.
This is one of the recommendations from the November 2017 Young Women’s report (pdf) which exposes the extent to which many young women who are out of work are isolated, with limited support networks, and struggling to get by financially.
This report finds:
- 264,000 women aged 16 to 24 in the UK are economically inactive (not working or currently able to look for work) and not in education or training – 37,000 more than men
- New mothers and those with a dependent child are six times more likely to be economically inactive than those without children. In contrast, having children does not impact on whether or not men are in work
- Being out of work, training and job-hunting for more than a year has been shown to limit a young person’s chances of gaining employment in the future.
