TL;DR

A taxpayer-funded pilot in Lancashire is putting 70 young people through three weeks of AI training, with apprenticeships waiting at JD Sports, Heinz and the IT firm Agilysys. It is a deliberate test of a policy assumption nobody has evidence for: that teaching AI to school leavers, rather than graduates, moves them into work. Almost a million 16- to 24-year-olds in Britain are outside education, employment and training.

What the pilot actually does

The venue is The Vault, a community hub opposite Preston bus station. Participants are either already classed as NEET or judged likely to become so, and the curriculum covers building AI tools, how businesses deploy the technology, and responsible use. IN4 Group holds the contract to run it.

Two apprenticeship tracks follow. One routes aspiring content creators towards AI marketing roles; the other leads to IT helpdesks that need people who understand the tools. The distinction that matters is that these are vacancies employers have already identified, not a general hope that training leads somewhere.

Attendees describe a shift in attitude rather than a career plan. Remy Simms, 17, said the course “changed my opinion” on the technology, and that “you can work with AI and you don’t have to work against it”.

The evidence gap

Almost everything written about AI and entry-level work concerns graduates, on the assumption that models will absorb the junior grind in law, banking and consultancy. Dr Bouke Klein Teeselink of King’s College London is blunt that the non-graduate picture is unmapped, and sees the scheme as a chance to fill that in. His test is twofold: how substantial the training really is, and whether the recruits measurably lift their employers’ output.

Not everyone accepts the framing. Chris Goulden of the Youth Futures Organisation attributes the post-pandemic rise in NEET numbers to mental health and a slack economy rather than automation, though he still backs the intervention: if AI is removing the bottom rung, giving young people a grip on it is sensible.

Looking forward

Alan Milburn’s recent warning about a “lost generation” put welfare reform, not bootcamps, at the centre of the answer. Seventy places will not shift the national figure. What it can produce, if the government instruments it properly, is the first UK data on whether AI skills help non-graduates get hired.