The UK is using an algorithm to track if you will drop out of school or lose your job
Key Points
- The RONI tool assigns each young person a risk score using data on school attendance, special educational needs, care experience and youth justice involvement
- 1.01 million young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were NEET between January and March 2026, equivalent to 13.5% of the age group
- Councils reported 32,100 "phantom NEETs" whose education or employment status is unknown
- The government is piloting the automatic allocation of college places for school leavers with no confirmed destination
The Department for Education has rolled out a new Risk of NEET Indicator (RONI) tool to councils across England, scoring individual teenagers on their likelihood of ending up out of education, employment or training.
The tool’s rollout was confirmed in the Race Equality Engagement Group’s first annual report, published this month, which sets out how the DfE is helping local authorities assess the NEET risk of individual young people based on data about their risk characteristics.
The system brings together factors including poor attendance, special educational needs and care experience so that councils can assign a risk score to individual young people and target support sooner.
Local authority RONI processes also draw on data that schools cannot access themselves, including social care and youth justice records, according to the DfE’s guidance for councils.
In practice, this means a teenager’s school records, family circumstances and contact with social services now feed an algorithmic score that determines whether they receive early intervention.
Essex County Council’s version of the tool scores every student against 15 categories and feeds a real-time dashboard containing child-level data, which its youth service uses to respond to individual concerns, the council said.
Why the government is scoring teenagers
The intervention comes as youth unemployment figures worsen. Between January and March 2026, 13.5% of young people in the UK aged 16 to 24 were NEET, a total of 1.01 million.
In England, an estimated 839,900 young people were NEET between October and December 2025, almost 1 in 8 of the age group.
The data councils hold is currently still patchy. New figures reported by local authorities revealed 32,100 so-called “phantom NEETs” going unaccounted for, with North Lincolnshire Council missing information for nearly half of its 16 and 17 year olds.
Participation in education and apprenticeships ranges from 71.8% to 94.2% across the country.
Support for young people flagged by the tool could include securing a college place, arranging mental health support, or organising taster sessions to draw them back into education and training.
The DfE is also piloting the automatic allocation of further education places for school leavers who have no confirmed post-16 destination, and working with colleges to track attendance and intervene earlier.
The scheme sits within the government’s Youth Guarantee, a £2.5 billion programme over three years giving all young people access to training, an apprenticeship or employment support, alongside eight local “trailblazer” areas now in their second year.
