Our Young People Are: Hungry for Direction. Ready for Skills. Desperate for Opportunity.
A landmark report, Inside the Mind of a 16-Year-Old, has crystallised something those of us in skills and employability have known for years. After listening to hundreds of young people across England, the report is unequivocal: this is not a disengaged generation. They are ambitious, thoughtful and capable.
Yet the route into work, training and opportunity is too often unclear, uneven and, crucially, short-term.
"one million young people outside of education"
At the same time, almost one million young people across the UK are now outside education, employment or training. Youth inactivity is rising at its fastest rate in more than a decade. A government inquiry has been launched because the situation demands urgent, coordinated action.
But when you speak to young people directly, the message is not one of apathy or disconnection. They are asking for more:
More clarity.
More skills.
More opportunity.
More belief in their potential.
This is not only a youth challenge. It is an economic challenge. A productivity challenge. And for Pathway Group, it remains one of the most important social mobility challenges of our time.
What Pathway Group is seeing -and doing
We see these realities every day through our delivery across regions and programmes.
Across Greater London
Through the GLA Futures for All programme, we support Londoners who need structured careers guidance, confidence-building, and targeted employability pathways. Many young people tell us the same thing: “Show me the route, and I’ll take it.”
Across the West Midlands
Our WMCA-funded Path2 Apprenticeship programme provides practical preparation, mentoring, and employer engagement for young people seeking their first step into work. It creates the bridge between aspiration and action -and we are seeing strong results.
Across boroughs and regions, our teams consistently encounter the same truth:
Young people are not lacking aspiration.
They are lacking visibility, support, and the consistent funding that allows providers like us to walk with them for long enough to make transformation possible.
We need more -and we need it consistently
Skills and employability providers cannot deliver lasting impact with short-term pilots or fragmented contracts.
If we are serious about social mobility, we need:
- Longer-term investment and multi-year funding
- Stability for learners, employers and providers
- Programmes that build capability, not one-off interventions
- Clear pathways from community learning to pre-employment to apprenticeships
- Stronger alignment between local priorities and national ambition
Young people’s needs don’t fit a one-year cycle.
Our funding shouldn’t either.
A quote from Safaraz Ali, Founder & CEO, Pathway Group
“For more than a decade, Pathway Group has championed this agenda through the Multicultural Apprenticeship & Skills Alliance, the Multicultural Apprentice Network, and our annual Festival of Apprenticeships. These platforms give young people visibility, confidence and belonging -and they prove that talent is everywhere, even when opportunity isn’t.
I want to recognise and congratulate our team for their unwavering commitment to this work. They understand that the biggest impact comes from supporting those who often feel furthest away from opportunity. We now need more stability and longer-term investment across the skills and employability landscape so we can continue delivering the outcomes our young people deserve.”
What needs to happen next
If we want young people to thrive, our system must deliver:
- Employer-led skills aligned with real labour market needs
- Fit-for-purpose pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship pathways
- Meaningful skills-building -communication, confidence, resilience, digital capability
- Localised, community-rooted models like Pathway Group’s GLA and WMCA programmes
- Stable, long-term funding arrangements that reflect the scale of the challenge
Our takeaway from the report
This generation isn’t lost.
They’re ready.
They are waiting -not for another pilot -but for a system that believes in them enough to invest consistently, confidently and for the long term.
At Pathway Group, we see their potential every day. We stand ready to do more, to reach further, and to build fairer, clearer pathways into work and apprenticeships.
Young people are ready for opportunity.
We must be ready to provide it -at scale, with consistency, and with purpose.