FOUR kids in every Year 6 class are currently destined for life on the dole, Labour’s welfare czar will be warned today.
Alan Milburn will receive a damning report’s findings this morning.
Analysis by the Centre for Social Justice reveals more than 100,000 21-year-olds are now living on jobless benefits.
That is equivalent to four pupils in an average primary school class — up from three in the past five years.
The wide-ranging report also warns that too many children are falling behind at school, with a fifth of all Year 6 pupils failing to meet required reading standards last year.
The CSJ research suggests 40,000 of them would be confined to at least 12 months of early adulthood without a job.
And the crisis of NEETS — youngsters not in employment, education or training — can be traced back to school years.
Persistent absenteeism is a big factor for the jobs scrapheap while schools should also stop pushing pupils to university as the default route.
Dan Lilley, from the CSJ, said: “It’s time to jam the conveyor belt sending youngsters straight from school on to out-of-work benefits.
“No child should be doomed to a life on the margins. That means ending the obsession with university, expanding technical education.
“And also rewiring the incentives across the education system to drive up employment outcomes for school-leavers.”
Mr Milburn, who is leading a government review into Britain’s youth unemployment crisis, presented the findings of his interim review last month.
It criticised a “record of failure” leading to more than one million youngsters out of work and put the annual cost of the crisis at more than £125billion.
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