Careers guidance should be at the centre of Alan Milburn’s final Neet report | Letters

Dr Deirdre Hughes says the issue of chronic underinvestment in high-quality, impartial careers guidance across schools, colleges and communities needs to be addressed

Alan Milburn’s interim review into young people not in education, employment or training lays bare what those of us working in careers support services have long observed: this is a system failure, not a failure of young people (‘A record of failure’: what’s in the first part of Alan Milburn’s Neet report?, 28 May).

Milburn rightly identifies the deep structural dysfunction that has left more than 1 million young people locked out of work and learning – and the stark imbalance between the £25 spent on benefits for every £1 directed at employment support. But the review’s framing of this primarily as a welfare and employment problem risks missing a deeper structural deficit: the chronic underinvestment in high-quality, impartial careers guidance across schools, colleges and communities.