The Netherlands has a secret weapon in the war on youth unemployment: they call it the ‘MBO route’. It is the vocational education system that has slashed joblessness among young people to just 8 per cent, compared with 14 per cent in Britain. And it is built on a simple principle: no dead ends.
In Holland, if you leave school at 16 you are not cast adrift. You enter a system of apprenticeships and college courses that are tightly linked to industry. There are over 800 different qualifications in everything from metalwork to logistics, all designed with employers. A young person can start as a trainee mechanic and end up running a garage.
The contrast with Britain is stark. Here, a generation of school leavers has been fed a diet of ‘go to university or fail’. The result is a rump of disconnected young people, many from the industrial towns I know, who are left without proper training or support. The Labour Market Statistics for December showed 800,000 16 to 24 year olds not in education, employment or training. That is a scandal.
I visited a training centre in Utrecht where 17 year old Lena was welding a steel frame. She told me: ‘At first I thought it was for boys. But my teacher said no, give it a go. Now I have a job waiting for me.’ That is the Dutch way: work based learning, not classroom abstraction. The state subsidises employers heavily to take on apprentices, and the colleges are run like businesses. The trade unions have a seat at the table too, ensuring wages and conditions are fair.
Could it work here? I put that question to a policy expert at the Offord Centre for Child Studies. He said the key was ‘institutional trust’. In the Netherlands, the social partners – unions, government, business – have a pact. Here, we have a revolving door of ministers and initiative fatigue.
But there are signs of hope. The new government’s Youth Guarantee is a step forward, but it is underfunded. The Dutch spend three times more per head on vocational training. That is the price of dignity for our young people.
When I think of the steel towns and mill towns that voted for Brexit, I see the anger of left behind kids. The Dutch model offers a roadmap: invest in skills, respect manual labour, and create a system where every young person has a path, no matter where they start. No dead ends, just a ladder.
It is time we started listening.
