Northern Ireland stands at a crossroads, a famous comment, often overplayed, overused and overemphasised. Having flagged the extent of not building policy that can have positive impact, education loomed large into view. The second largest budget, after Health, neither can be said to be delivering the outcomes we need.
 
With economic inactivity costing the economy up to £9 billion per year, we must ask difficult but necessary questions about our education system. Are we preparing our young people not just to pass exams, but to engage meaningfully with the world of work, training, and enterprise? Or are we inadvertently contributing to the very problem we seek to solve?
 
The answer may lie somewhere in between. But one thing is certain: the current trajectory of secondary education is not aligned with the economic needs of Northern Ireland or the potential of our young people. The default to reforming multiple sectors is not going to change the outcome, playing academic verses technical and vocational is not the answer, it is about rebuilding a sector around the learners needs.
 
The Disconnect: Curriculum vs Capability
For too long, the structure of secondary education has prioritised academic pathways, often at the expense of practical skills, vocational insight, and real-world readiness. This system suits some, but fails many, particularly those from lower-income backgrounds or with different learning styles. It's no coincidence that NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) rates remain stubbornly high among 16–24-year-olds.
 
Students disengage because what they learn feels irrelevant. They don’t see the connection between their maths lesson and a future in software engineering, or between their science class and a role in advanced manufacturing. And when they leave school, often without clear direction, they risk becoming part of the economic inactivity statistics we must do more to reduce.
 
Is Current Policy Helping?
The Department for Education has made strides, with programmes like Engage, Restart, and enhanced careers guidance. But these interventions often come too late, tacked on at Key Stage 4, when disengagement has already taken root. A sharper focus is needed at Key Stage 3 and transition years (14–16), when young people begin to shape their identity and ambition.
 
And while curriculum review and mental health support are welcome, the real test is whether these policies build bridges to the world beyond school gates.
 
A Better Path: Collaboration Is the Catalyst
The good news? The answers are already within reach—and Further Education (FE) colleges are key to unlocking them.
Imagine a system where 14-year-olds can sample real industries, where project-based learning is co-delivered with local employers, and where teachers partner with FE tutors to blend academic and vocational routes without stigma.
 
FE colleges have proven expertise in helping people transition into work. From digital apprenticeships to green skills bootcamps, they are agile, industry-facing and rooted in community need. But too often, they are an afterthought in policy design, when they should be front and centre.
 
What Could It Look Like?

• Early vocational taster programmes delivered jointly between schools and colleges
• Employer-led challenge weeks in curriculum time
• Flexible 14–19 pathways that allow for mixing GCSEs with BTECs, micro credentials, and work experience
• Incentives for schools to partner with FE providers, not compete with them

 
The Prize: Purpose, Progress, Productivity
A young person who understands their value and sees a future for themselves is less likely to become economically inactive. By realigning the education system to meet both learner potential and labour market need, we give young people the chance to thrive and Northern Ireland the workforce it needs to grow.
 
Let’s not wait for another generation to slip through the cracks. Let’s build a system where education ignites opportunity, not exclusion. It’s time the NI Executive, Education and Economy departments broke out of self-interest and protectionism to support schools, FE colleges, and employers to work in synergy for the future of our young people, and the prosperity of our economy. Pockets of this type of activity, working outside of the system are delivering, it now should be completely mainstream, ending the exam factory system of today.
 

In a society where nearly one in four working-age adults is economically inactive, the question is no longer whether we need change, but whether we are structurally capable of delivering it.

Northern Ireland’s economic inactivity rate remains the highest in the UK. Despite decades of policy attention, the underlying causes are well documented: long-term sickness, caring responsibilities, early retirement, and low engagement in adult learning persist. The challenge is not a lack of data or diagnosis. It is a question of political will, institutional agility, and cultural readiness to act.

A System Designed to Sustain the Status Quo?
Northern Ireland’s public sector is large by any comparative measure. The Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) employs over 23,000 people, and public sector employment accounts for more than a quarter of the workforce, far higher than in England or the Republic of Ireland. This scale brings stability, but it also brings inertia.

The NICS is predominantly middle-class, degree-educated, and urban-based. It is a system that, by design or default, reflects the values and priorities of those who work within it. This is not a critique of individuals, but of a culture that prizes process over outcomes, and continuity over disruption.

Too often, policy is shaped by what is administratively convenient rather than what is socially transformative. Investment flows to institutions that already exist, rather than to the communities that need them most. The result is a system that manages disadvantage rather than resolving it.

The Cost of Comfort
This middle-class policy bias manifests in subtle but powerful ways. Funding for Further Education (FE) colleges—those most likely to serve economically inactive adults—is consistently lower than for universities. Health spending prioritises acute care over prevention. Employment programmes focus on those closest to the labour market, not those furthest from it.

The cost of this comfort is hard to properly estimate, if it is extrapolated from wider UK data the cost of economic inactivity to Northern Ireland is between £6.7 and £9.2billion! This is a combination of lost economic output, public spending on welfare and health interventions, foregone tax revenues and the social costs of higher crime rates (sustained by the scourge of so-called paramilitarism) mental health impacts and the burden of caregiving, which impacts women disproportionality. 

Meanwhile, the people most affected by economic inactivity, older workers with health conditions, women with caring responsibilities, young people without qualifications remain on the margins of policy design. Their voices are rarely heard in the rooms where decisions are made. 

Learning from Elsewhere
Contrast this with the Basque Country in Spain. There, economic inactivity among working-age adults is around 15%, almost half the rate in Northern Ireland. The difference is not demographic; it is strategic.

The Basque model integrates vocational education, employment services, and social care. FE colleges are empowered to co-design curricula with employers. Modular, flexible learning is the norm. Occupational health is embedded in job centres. And most importantly, the system is designed around the needs of people, not the convenience of institutions.

A Call to Leadership
Northern Ireland does not lack talent, compassion, or creativity. What it lacks is a system that rewards boldness and centres lived experience. We need a civil service that reflects the diversity of the society it serves. We need policymaking that is co-designed with communities, not just consulted after the fact. And we need investment that is judged by its impact, not its alignment with existing structures.

This is not a call for revolution, but for rebalancing. For shifting the gravitational pull of the system away from the centre and toward the edges. For recognising that the status quo is not neutral, it is a choice. And it is a choice we can no longer afford to make.

The Conversation Starts Here
This note and thoughts contained is not a conclusion. It is an invitation, an invitation to everyone in Northern Ireland,  politicians, civil servants, educators, and citizens. An invitation to ask harder questions and imagine better answers. What would it take to build a system that truly works for everyone? And what are we prepared to change to get there? 

The measure of who we are, is what we do, with what we have – Vince Lombardi