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More Choices, More Chances: A Strategy to Reduce the Proportion of Young People not in Education, Employment or Training in Scotland

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Appendix 2: Choice of Geographic Areas for NEET Targeting

1. To help identify geographic areas for targeting NEET the following indicators were looked at:

  • Proportion NEET - taken from the 2001 Census
  • Proportion not entering education, training or employment on leaving school - School Leavers Destination 2003/04
  • Benefit claimants per 1,000 population - DWP data
  • Attendance rate - Education Department data
  • Exclusion rate - Education Department data
  • Proportion with tariff score below 50 - Education Department data

2. The relationships between the proportion NEET and the other 5 indicators were investigated to ensure that these indicators would be good indicators to determine any geographic areas to target. All 5 of the indicators were found to be significant predictors of NEET.

3. It should be noted that there is strong evidence that educational attainment is linked to NEET. However, due to the nature of tariff scores it is not appropriate to use this measure for this purpose. 1 This is caused by the fact that although a lot of the NEET population have a low tariff score, having a low tariff score does not accurately predict whether you become NEET. It should also be noted that tariff scores are fairly strongly correlated with exclusion and attendance rates and as these are still included they should represent the educational attainment aspect.

4. As the 5 indicators are different measures and are on different scales it was decided to standardise each indicator. This standardisation produces scores for the 32 Local Authority areas for each indicator (a positive score indicates worse than the Scottish average and a negative score indicates better than the Scottish average). An average of these indicators was taken and the Local Authorities were then ranked based on this average score.

5. After creating these average scores it was agreed that some of these 5 indicators were more directly related to NEET than the others. For this reason it was agreed that a weighting system should be used. After looking at the different indicators it was agreed that NEET scores would be given a relative weighting of 3, the destinations and benefits data would be given a relative weighting of 2 and the exclusion and attendance data would be given a relative weighting of 1. The top seven areas identified using the weighted measure are Glasgow City, North Ayrshire, Dundee City, East Ayrshire, West Dunbartonshire, Clackmannanshire and Inverclyde. Table 1 shows the ranks for the Local Authority areas.

6. Table 2 overleaf, provides details of the performance on each indicator by Local Authority area.

1 R2 value of 0.35. Other indicators had R2 values of over 0.59 except the destinations which had an R2 value of 0.45

Table 1: Local Authority Ranking

Rank

Glasgow City

1

North Ayrshire

2

Dundee City

3

East Ayrshire

4

West Dunbartonshire

5

Clackmannanshire

6

Inverclyde

7

North Lanarkshire

8

West Lothian

9

Falkirk

10

South Ayrshire

11

Renfrewshire

12

Fife

13

South Lanarkshire

14

Dumfries & Galloway

15

East Lothian

16

Angus

17

Aberdeen City

18

Edinburgh, City of

19

Midlothian

20

Highland

21

Moray

22

Perth & Kinross

23

Scottish Borders

24

Argyll & Bute

25

Stirling

26

Aberdeenshire

27

East Renfrewshire

28

East Dunbartonshire

29

Orkney Islands

30

Eilean Siar

31

Shetland Islands

32

Table 2: Summary of Indicators for Geographic Choice

Local Authority Area

% NEET1

Destinations 2

Benefits 3

Attendance 4

Exclusions 5

Scotland

13.2%

20

82.9

90.2%

53

Aberdeen City

9.5%

25

49.3

91.8%

41

Aberdeenshire

8.7%

16

52.9

93.5%

26

Angus

12.9%

14

77.8

91.6%

42

Argyll & Bute

10.5%

14

36.0

91.9%

49

Clackmannanshire

16.9%

25

73.5

88.3%

46

Dumfries & Galloway

14.9%

15

71.4

92.2%

36

Dundee City

14.2%

22

116.2

88.0%

97

East Ayrshire

16.4%

22

90.3

89.0%

80

East Dunbartonshire

6.9%

12

17.5

91.4%

32

East Lothian

13.0%

19

54.8

91.7%

35

East Renfrewshire

6.5%

19

15.8

93.9%

14

Edinburgh, City of

9.8%

19

64.8

90.3%

37

Eilean Siar

9.3%

7

-

91.2%

6

Falkirk

14.6%

26

65.6

89.0%

48

Fife

13.8%

20

80.5

90.8%

63

Glasgow City

19.1%

30

108.1

86.3%

95

Highland

11.8%

16

41.4

90.8%

25

Inverclyde

15.1%

22

106.1

89.9%

69

Midlothian

11.7%

14

55.9

90.5%

45

Moray

12.2%

16

29.2

92.3%

32

North Ayrshire

17.4%

22

127.0

88.1%

73

North Lanarkshire

15.5%

25

69.6

88.4%

67

Orkney Islands

7.9%

14

-

93.5%

17

Perth & Kinross

9.4%

17

43.7

90.9%

37

Renfrewshire

12.6%

23

72.0

90.0%

74

Scottish Borders

11.2%

14

59.8

93.1%

23

Shetland Islands

7.7%

11

-

93.0%

14

South Ayrshire

14.0%

24

70.2

89.9%

59

South Lanarkshire

12.9%

17

91.8

89.3%

56

Stirling

8.5%

17

38.4

90.3%

16

West Dunbartonshire

15.9%

23

91.5

89.4%

77

West Lothian

15.3%

20

113.3

90.8%

50

1 Proportion NEET - taken from the 2001 Census
2 Proportion not entering education, training or employment on leaving school - School Leavers Destination 2003/4
3 Benefit claimants per 1,000 population - DWP data
4 Attendance rate - Education Department data
5 Exclusion rate - Education Department data

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Page updated: Tuesday, June 13, 2006