The hidden benefits crisis of 42,000 teenagers quiet quitting college

Britain faces a future “benefits crisis” because tens of thousands of teenagers are effectively disappearing from education and training without being counted as Neets, the Children’s Commissioner has told The i Paper. In an exclusive interview, Dame Rachel de Souza described the findings as a “wake-up call”, warning that ministers must act now or risk a future “benefits crisis”. According to her analysis, an estimated 42,000 16- and 17-year-olds are enrolled in college but attending fewer than half of their timetabled sessions, leaving them effectively disengaged from education while remaining invisible in official figures. Shorts They are in addition to the 48,000 16- and 17-year-olds already officially classified as Neet – not in education, employment or training – meaning almost 90,000 teenagers are either already outside the system or at serious risk of falling out of it. De Souza said it was a “disaster” that teenagers could silently drop out of education without anyone noticing, with young people becoming increasingly stuck and unable to see a route into work or further education. Blind spot in the debate The warning comes as the Government examines the rise in young people becoming Neet, with former health secretary Alan Milburn leading an independent review into young people and work. But De Souza’s intervention reveals a potentially significant blind spot in that debate: young people drifting out of education long before they appear in the official Neet statistics. It comes amid a much wider crisis facing young people. Almost one million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are currently Neet – with 981,000 recorded in the latest figures for April to June 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics. That represents 13 per cent of all young people in the age group. De Souza said she began investigating college attendance after repeatedly hearing from 16- and 17-year-olds who felt stuck and unable to see a route into the future they wanted.After hearing stories from teenagers about college, she asked the Department for Education (DfE) for attendance data and they told her: “We don’t have it.” “I was absolutely shocked… I had no idea there was no requirement to report on this,” she said Using her statutory powers, the commissioner’s office collected attendance data directly from 262 of England’s 290 college groups, covering more than 90 per cent of the sector, for the spring term of 2026. It found that 28,528 students aged 16 and 17 years old were severely absent, missing at least half their expected sessions. Extrapolated across the whole sector, that equates to approximately 41,995 students nationally. She said the absence could not simply be explained away by teenagers having jobs or other commitments. ‘These are the kids feeling stuck’ “These are the kids on courses they don’t want to be on,” she said. “These are the kids feeling stuck. These are the kids who need mental health support. These are the kids in poverty. There are the kids why we don’t even know… because the data is not collected.” More than half – 52.2 per cent – of 16- and 17-year-olds in college had attendance below 90 per cent, the threshold used to define persistent absence in schools. Average attendance was 84.8 per cent for 16-year-olds and 83.4 per cent for 17-year-olds, compared with 94.8 per cent in primary schools and 91.6 per cent in secondary schools over the same period. Attendance was lowest among teenagers taking GCSE English and maths resits, at 75.6 per cent and 74.4 per cent respectively. De Souza described this as “an important risk marker of becoming Neet”. She said colleges were doing good work in some cases, but that there was no consistent national picture of what was happening. “Some are doing fantastic work on this,” she said. “But they need that national collection focus on best practice: What is it we expect? What should we be doing? Because we cannot let this generation go under the bus.” Milburn backed the commissioner’s intervention, saying: “The Children’s Commissioner is right to shine a light on hidden Neets.” “The fact that colleges have no obligation to report attendance means tens of thousands of young people can disengage entirely without clear accountability. A better system is needed to ensure that no young person can be lost in this way.” De Souza said the response needed to begin before young people reached 16. She called for employers, schools and colleges to work together to create clearer routes into work, apprenticeships and further education. “We’ve got to be starting younger when this, we know some of this disengagement starts,” she said De Souza said she was particularly concerned about teenagers now “sitting in their bedrooms” and feeling there was no route forward. She said young people could be left despairing that they had chosen the wrong course, lacked the experience to get a job and were being “kicked back” by AI. Unless that sense of hopelessness was addressed, she warned, the country could face an even bigger “benefits crisis”. Dame Rachel de Souza’s four proposals to address the problem: National attendance data: consistent collection of attendance data for 16- and 17-year-olds across all state-funded providers, with DfE-set targets that Ofsted can use during inspections. Mental health support: faster roll-out of Mental Health Support Teams into post-16 settings, alongside wraparound support for students starting college. Better routes into work: giving metro mayors and Combined Authorities responsibility for co-ordinating employer engagement with schools and colleges, alongside improved work experience opportunities. Free transport: extending free bus travel to all children to remove transport as a barrier to attendance, particularly in rural areas. Alan Milburn backed the intervention, saying: “The Children’s Commissioner is right to shine a light on hidden Neets.”