Post-16 Transitions: a Longitudinal Study of Young People with ...

change has been in the structure of the youth labour market.
After the post-Second World War boom, the English
manufacturing industry, in common with that in many parts
of the ‘developed’ world, went into a significant decline and
the balance of industrial composition shifted markedly from
manufacturing to service industries (Lindsay, 2003). This in
turn had implications for rising unemployment, increasing
labour market ‘flexibility’ (such as part-time employment) and
declining male participation in the workforce. There were
particular implications for young people. Whilst employment
generally grew in this period, youth unemployment rose
spectacularly; from 1960 when the unemployment rate for
under-25s was between two and three per cent, the figure had
risen to over 21 per cent by the early 1980s (Coles, 1995). As a
result, young people delayed their entry into the labour
market and instead became more likely to follow the
education and training pathways, by staying on at school,
entering further education or participating in a range of
vocational training schemes. Whereas in the late 1970s nearly
half of 16-year olds entered the labour market directly, by the
late 1990s, this figure had shrunk to ten per cent (Pearce and
Hillman, 1998).
Currently, therefore, young people are much more likely than
their predecessors to have what Coles (1995) calls ‘extended’
or ‘fractured’ transitions. At best, more young people are
likely to find themselves spending substantial periods of time
in education and training after the end of statutory schooling,
before finally entering the labour market in their late teens or
early twenties. They may, during this time, be making steady
progress in terms of skills, knowledge and accreditation, but
there are, of course, implications in the meantime for their
capacity to live independently and achieve other markers of
adulthood. At worst, however, young people find themselves
in a ‘magic roundabout’ situation (Roberts, 1995). They are
retained in repeated cycles of training with little obvious
progression, becoming unemployed, or moving episodically
between spells of training, spells of short-term employment
and spells of unemployment. Again, the implications for their
capacity to live independently, grow in maturity, establish
stable relationships and become active citizens may be
significant.
2.2 Policy responses
Successive governments have responded to this changing
situation in two broad ways. First, they have increased the
opportunities and incentives for young people to follow the
education and training pathways by expanding further and
higher education and encouraging the development of a range
10 Post-16 Transitions of Young People with SEN: Wave 2