Last year, the Learning and Work Institute published a Youth Opportunity Index. Part of our ongoing Youth Commission, it looked at how education and employment opportunities for young people varied across England. It showed a mixed picture: no North-South divide; deprivation linked to lower opportunity, but not inevitably; and areas performing better on some measures than others.

It reminded me of something Justine Greening, former education secretary, has said: talent is evenly distributed across the country, but opportunity is not.

I see that in much of our work with local and combined Authorities and local enterprise partnerships (LEPs). All want to improve their overall economic performance, most want to do that through inclusive growth: narrowing gaps within their local areas and between different demographic groups.

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Local leadership

Given the disparities in opportunity within and between areas and the complexity of the overall picture, surely local leadership has a crucial role to play in improving opportunities for young people?

That’s what our latest Youth Commission event, attended by our patron HRH Princess Anne, was all about. The ultimate objective of the Youth Commission is to identify ways to improve: young people’s core skills like literacy and numeracy; education and learning opportunities; and chances to work and progress. It’s about making sure the very best opportunities are available to all young people.

I was pleased we could hear from a number of young people at the event about their ambitions, challenges and the support they’d like. As you’d expect, these varied significantly from help with core skills, to being given a chance by an employer. This diversity should remind us of the need for support to be tailored to individuals. That’s easy to lose sight of when designing national (or even local) services.

Local challenges

We also heard from a number of areas about how they are responding to their particular local challenges. There are lots of interesting and innovative approaches going on. I think, though, there’s more to do to share these examples across the country and also to rigorously test ideas and build the evidence base.

Sometimes these responses rely on a local or combined authority’s “soft power”, such as their ability to convene together key local employers and stakeholders. Sometimes these require national government action. T levels and apprenticeships have great potential to make a difference.

And sometimes they need local and national action. For example, Local Authorities and stakeholders can play a big role in raising awareness of technical education routes, including T levels. But if that area does not have significant employment in a particular sector, then there’s little chance of a T level work placement or apprenticeship. Is our answer to those young people going to be that they live in the wrong place and will need to change their ambitions? That their talents will go unfulfilled? Surely not. National government needs to work with local government to see if we can find an answer that doesn’t dilute the rigour and employer focus of these routes (easier said than done).

No contact with education

Similarly, I worry about the 40,000 16- to 17-year-olds in England who are not in education, employment or training (Neet), despite the raising of the education participation age. They are not entitled to out-of-work benefits and so miss out on support from Jobcentre Plus. By definition they are not in contact with education institutions.

And many local Neets services have been cut alongside cuts to local authority budgets. We can surely do better than that. We need to set out clearly who’s responsibility engaging them in education and/or employment is, and make sure they are properly funded to do it (avoiding what the US call an unfunded mandate, where a state or other body is given a responsibility, but without the funding to deliver it).

Ultimately, better education and employment opportunities for young people rely on a collaboration between central and local government, and partnerships locally. Devolution is one piece of the jigsaw I’m sure. But this is about more than who holds the purse strings (as important as that is). It’s also about supporting and enabling local leadership to build integrated systems.

The next phase of the Youth Commission will be looking at how to support young people to get better outcomes, and the balance between national responsibility and local delivery.

Stephen Evans is chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute