WE can’t just hope that the economic cycle will provide the answer.

Like the budget deficit, youth unemployment is a structural problem: it was with us in the boom, and only exacerbated by the bust.

In the decade of growth before the recession, the youth unemployment rate in the UK actually rose and, by 2007, was above the average for developed countries.

My concern is that the problem lies in the outputs of our education system. Last year, only 55% of pupils achieved five GCSEs at A* to C level, including English and maths.

Add social deprivation into the mix and the figures become even more dire. It was thought more money was the answer: more teachers, smaller classes, better buildings.

They can all play a part. But money isn’t the answer by itself. Despite having the world’s sixth-largest economy, and despite big real-terms funding increases, we’ve been slipping down the league tables.

Action needs to be taken early. The Centre for Social Justice’s Breakthrough Britain report shows that a child’s developmental score at 22 months is a predictor of educational outcomes at age 26.

Moving on a stage, there’s more for primary schools to do. It’s in those years that the gap between high and low attainment widens. At present we spend more per head in secondary schools than in primary schools, but young people under-performing at 11 are sadly more likely than not still to be under-performing at 16.

Business involvement in schools is important, too.

Again, we could start earlier. While two in three employers have links with secondary schools, only one in five have links with primary schools. Given my earlier comments about educational performance, this could be a critical missing link.

But, just as teachers can’t work miracles, neither can employers create wave after wave of opportunities. There are wider societal challenges too.

It’s estimated we spend only 15% of our childhoods in school. So the blights of family breakdown, crime and ill-health can’t be dealt with only there. We need the Government’s efforts on welfare and criminal justice reform to bear fruit.

Uneven wealth distribution is hardly unique to Britain. But the low education mobility here is troubling.

There’s a moral imperative to think about why this is, and what we can do to help. Ken McMeikan, chair of CBI North East and chief executive of Greggs will nationally be chairing a taskforce on Getting the UK Working – every business in the North East must think what more it can do.

:: Sarah Green, regional director, CBI North East