There have been many efforts made to ensure that young people are directed, supported and assisted when it comes to life beyond traditional education. However, there needs to be a lot of work done to boost various schemes and initiatives that attempt to secure the future of youngsters once they leave school.

This is the opinion of Lorna Fitzjohn, director for further education and skills at Ofsted, who said that too many young people are not in education, employment or training (NEET) or, quite simply put, "their whereabouts are unknown".

For example, data shows that approximately 1.2 million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 are classed as NEET. While this is a significant problem in its own right, there is further challenges in the rising number who are have, to all intents, fallen off the radar.

Speaking during Ofsted’s Further Education and Skills Annual Lecture at the multimillion pound creative youth space Spotlight in Tower Hamlets, London, MsFitzjohn told audience members that there has to be more of a concerted drive to address this growing problem.

"As the participation age for education and training rises to 18, it needs to be acknowledged that the 18 to 24 age group could fast become the 'new NEETs'," the education expert said.

"It is simply not enough to keep young people in education and training longer if they still fail to gain meaningful qualifications and experiences that will help them achieve their career goals. Instead, all this will do for many is delay their inevitable fall into the NEET category."

Ms Fitzjohn called on all stakeholders, including the government, local authorities and employers to deliver "clear and combined action" to triumph over these "failures".

"During our visits to local authorities and providers, which informed our survey report, we saw a number of examples that showed it is possible to successfully alter provision to meet the needs of young people," she added.

"I therefore urge all parties involved in providing education and training post-16 to consider Ofsted’s findings and work together to make sure that all young people are given the skills and experience they need to achieve their aspirations."

Criticism was given of the response of schools, colleges and skills provider in terms of how they have implemented the 16 to 19 education and training programmes, which were brought into force last year to boost the quality of career advice and education provision.

However, 12 months on, Ofsted has found in a survey that progress has been "slow and weak". It noted that education providers are failing to deliver programmes that meet the needs of learners, the teaching of maths and English is substandard, too many students are ending up as NEET and career guidance is not delivering clear and focused paths.

All of this runs contrary to the philosophy of the scheme, which is access to a "challenging individualised learning programme," that supports their development and progression so that they are able to follow through on their future career plans with confidence, the right skills and qualifications needed.

Some of the recommendations made by Ofsted to address the shortcomings include developing a dependable system that effectively tracks a young person's progress through the education system and give local authorities power to intervene where they feel schools and colleges are not appropriately tracking young people who drop out.

"To summarise, it is clear that we simply don’t know the scale of the problem – and the implications of this are serious," Ms Fitzjohn said. "At all levels, planning and delivering education and training to reduce the number of young people in this group is dependent on the quality, accuracy, reliability and transferability of local and national data."