In Scotland every year around 50% of our statutory school leavers, those who leave at age 16, move onto a job, apprenticeship or further education. 30% move on to training of some kind, but this may last just a few weeks, leaving those young people cut adrift. 

The last 20%, and the group we are most concerned about, are completely lost. And that 20% is not spread evenly across Scotland. We see a concentration in our areas of multiple deprivation.

Many of these young people leave school with poor qualifications, not equipped for the labour market. Some get insecure low-paid jobs.

Most spend much of their lives unemployed. Each case is a personal tragedy.

There is also a huge cost to society in terms of wasted human potential and increased costs of welfare, health and criminal justice. 

We actually tend to lose these young people at the early stages of secondary school, when they begin to disengage and, if attending, are there in body only.

These students feel that we don’t believe in them and they start believing that they have no future. They are destined for failure.

So how do we keep these young people engaged, excited about learning, and about their future? How do we go about breaking this cycle? Could a change in pedagogy, ethos and relationships make the difference?

Having looked into this issue as an employer and with others, advising the Scottish Government by taking a particular look at the group of young people classified as Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) and not seeing anything happening to change this, we decided that we had to do something.

We created Newlands Junior College (NJC), on the Southside of Glasgow, to provide an alternative pathway for this cohort of young people, to give them the support and opportunity to move onto a successful and rewarding future.

The intention was, if this five year project proved the junior college concept, it would be taken into the mainstream.

Newlands opened its doors in October 2014 to the first cohort of S3/4 aged students.

The college was small with 60 students across two year groups, and building positive, meaningful, trusting relationships with students was key.

The other three elements were: core academic subjects; vocational courses, in partnership with City of Glasgow College and GTG, the training arm of Arnold Clark, leading to relevant qualifications; and meaningful work experience, in partnership with local and national employers, which ignited desire in a field of work. 

This combination of elements worked. Our students started to achieve, to experience success, firstly with personal and social development awards such as first aid, health and safety and Duke of Edinburgh, leading to academic success in National 3, 4 and 5 qualifications, and in one or two cases highers. 

Work experience, combined with vocational courses undertaken at the FE college or GTG, were the elements that really excited our students. Acquiring the necessary skills and qualifications, and being in the world of work, seeing and tasting the jobs that could be theirs, working alongside and being supported by employers made it all real, and achievable.

We also guaranteed our students access to an apprenticeship or full time place at college on successful completion of two years at NJC.

The junior college did not look, feel or operate like a school. This was crucial to those disengaged young people who had switched off from school, and from learning. Key learning from this pilot was the need for the junior college to have its own space, not located within a school. 

Health and wellbeing were also important. In order to mitigate the effects of poverty (70% of the cohort came from the most disadvantaged areas) young people were collected by minibuses in the morning and brought into the college for breakfast.

A healthy lunch and snacks were also provided. Students were transported to vocational courses and work experience placements, and back home at the end of the day.

Newlands Junior College was created to address the suitability of school leavers for employment and disengagement of a large minority of school leavers, to demonstrate that by doing something different there could be a different result. And there was.

The individuals recruited to NJC were not expected to go on to a positive destination and were at a high degree of risk of ending up not in employment or education. 

Over its five years of operation 134 students attended NJC.  At the time of its closure 26 students returned to local authority schools to complete their statutory education as they were not yet 16.

Of the remaining 108 students, 89 completed their education at Newlands and 92% of those went on to a sustained positive destination; further education, an apprenticeship or a job. This is an outstanding achievement.

Throughout the project the plan had been to transition from private to mainstream and that NJC would become part of Glasgow City Council, a college in its own building within the local authority.

However, towards the end of the final year of the five year project (session 2018/19) the Council refused to do this and that is why Newlands closed.  The council said that they would support students in the same way as Newlands had, but slotted them back into their mainstream schools. How could this work?

It didn’t when the students attended those schools before and it wasn’t going to now.  It does make one think of that well known Einstein quote, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

It is puzzling that neither Glasgow, nor Scotland seem to want to learn from the proven success of Newlands Junior College. There is a reticence by the educational establishment to have conversations about alternative models that seek to collaborate with, enhance and support Scotland’s education system. Why is this?

- Jim McColl is the founder of Newlands Junior College