Denmark has traditionally had high employment rates for young people and low levels of youth unemployment. According to Eurostat, the youth unemployment rate in 2014 was 14.5 % for the age group 15-19 years and 11.3 % for the age group 20-24 years. For the age group 25-29 years, the unemployment rate in 2014 was 9.5 %. The educational level is of significant importance, when it comes to the risk of unemployment. Based on the labour force surveys (LFS), the rate of unemployment in 2014 was 13.9 % for young persons aged 25-29 years having only lower secondary education and 7.6 % for the medium skilled. For the highly skilled the rate of unemployment was 9.4 % reflecting the difficulties of newly university graduates during the crisis.

There is a focus on the share of young people, who are not in employment, education or training (the NEET group). This share in 2014 was 5.8 % for the age group 15-24 years, which is low compared to the EU-28 average of 12.4 %. The share of NEETS in 2014 was higher for young men than for young women (6.2 % versus 5.4 %). Also the share of NEETS has been affected by the economic crisis increasing from 4.3 % in 2008 to 6.6 % in 2012 and then declining again. The rate of early school leavers in the age group 18-24 years was 7.7 % in 2014.

The relatively low levels of youth unemployment and NEETs are related to the regime of active labour market policy, which is developed in Denmark over the past decades and based on early intervention and a widespread use of mandatory activation, especially for young unemployed persons, who are generally subject to earlier activation than adults.

For unskilled young unemployed persons the focus is furthermore on improving their formal skills through vocational education, based on the affirmation that unskilled young people face the largest risk of unemployment and unstable employment.

The young people under 30 years of age without a vocational education and receiving social assistance (education benefits) are given special attention after the cash benefit reform of 2014.

The aim of the programme is to move vulnerable young people from unemployment towards an ordinary education and ensure their ability to finish the education.

Building Bridge to Education takes place at vocational schools and consists of a fixed schedule with various short internships at vocational schools and enterprises. Furthermore the young persons will participate in courses to upgrade their basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic.

Moreover each young person is provided with a mentor to support them through their time and to provide them with some follow up support. The mentor will support the young person until the person is assigned to an ordinary internship as part of ordinary education. This allows the mentor to help the young person to handle obstacles which may occur during the process.

The initiative also aims at providing the young people with clarity about their goals regarding future education so they can become ready to continue in an ordinary education after finishing the building bridge to education programme. The short internships within vocational schools help this process along. Hereby the young people try different vocational education directions, which help them reach a greater feeling of clarity regarding their future choice of education.

A final evaluation of the building bridge to education programme is available on the brobygningtiluddannelse.dk.

The evaluation shows significant results:

• The project almost doubles the share of young people commencing a basic ordinary programme at a vocational school 26 weeks after enrolment in the programme.
• The project doubles the probability for the young people to complete the first part of the vocational education.
• A positive effect can also be seen on the number of young people commencing an ordinary education programme. 12 percent of the young people who participate in the Building Bridge to Education have commenced an ordinary education programme 80 weeks after they began their participation in Building Bridge to Education. For comparison, only 8 percent of young people in a control group similar to the participants of Building Bridge to Education commence an ordinary education programme at the same point in time.

​Feedback from satisfaction surveys show that 80% of young people think that the initiative has helped them to move towards completing an education and 85% of participants feel that the mentor is important to help them to address their challenges.