Young Lives, Young Futures (YLYF) is a major longitudinal research project led by researchers at King’s College London in collaboration with The Edge Foundation. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, this six-year project investigated how England's vocational education and training system can better support the school-to-work transitions of the 50% of young people who do not go to university.
The project addresses fundamental questions about young people's futures: what opportunities do young people have to develop the experience, confidence and skills they need to build fulfilling lives and careers, and how fairly are these opportunities distributed? For many young people, the transition from education into adulthood and employment can be complex, unstable and uncertain. Opportunities vary according to social and economic circumstances, geography and the resources available to individuals and communities.
YLYF placed particular emphasis on the experiences and perspectives of young people themselves, including those who are marginalised and whose voices are often missing from policymaking. The research examined young people's values, aspirations, agency and experiences as they navigated education, training, employment and unemployment.
The project combined a nationally representative longitudinal survey of young people with extensive qualitative research involving young people, policymakers and practitioners. This approach enabled the researchers to understand not only which opportunities young people are able to access, but how they experience the systems intended to support them.
A key concern was inequality. Young people's opportunities can be shaped by factors including social background, geography, gender, ethnicity and disability. These inequalities can affect access to further education, training and secure employment, influencing prospects throughout the life course. YLYF sought to understand how these disparities are produced and how they might be reduced.
The project also highlighted the importance of agency, arguing that young people should have a meaningful voice in decisions about the systems that shape their futures rather than being viewed simply as recipients of education and employment policy. The project's youth advisory group and young person-led engagement reflected this principle from the outset.
This makes Young Lives, Young Futures a strong expression of the Secure Futures vision of King’s Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy. Secure Futures is concerned not only with responding to threats, but with creating the conditions in which people and communities can thrive in the face of uncertainty and change.
For young people, security is closely connected to having meaningful choices, access to opportunity and the agency to shape the direction of their lives. YLYF demonstrates how social science can identify where systems are failing to provide those opportunities and generate evidence about how they can be improved.
The project also highlights the wider societal importance of creating successful transitions into adulthood. Ensuring that young people can access good education, training and employment is both intrinsically important and a driver of economic prosperity and social cohesion.
Young Lives, Young Futures contributes to a future in which opportunity is not determined by background or geography, and where young people have a genuine voice in shaping what comes next.
It therefore embodies a central principle of Secure Futures: a secure future is one in which people have both the opportunities and the agency to shape their own futures.