Probabilistic Agent-Based Modelling for Predicting School Attendance

在英国，16岁的孩子在完成考试后，必须再接受两年的教育、就业和培训。然而，大量儿童没有参加义务教育的最后阶段，成为"NEET"（不在教育、就业或培训中）。有一系列的事件可能使某人在16岁时成为NEET，这些事件通常发生在很小的年龄，因此确定最重要的原因是非常复杂的。因此，设计旨在识别并理想地防止这些负面影响的政策可能极具挑战性。一种可能有希望对导致NEET结果的个人和系统进行建模的方法是基于代理的建模（ABM）。ABM的特点是模型直接代表个人，模拟他们的行为和行动随着时间的推移。因此，这种方法可能是理想的探索事件，人，和系统，所有影响一个年轻人在很长一段时间内（从出生到16岁），目的是确定关键事件或行为，可能与成为NEET在以后的生活。这种预测本身就具有极大的不确定性，因此该项目还将首次开发一种基于概率代理的模型，该模型以概率的方式表示模型元素（变量、功能、输出等），直接捕捉系统中的不确定性。该项目将位于利兹大学，隶属于沃尔夫森应用健康研究中心。作为该中心的一部分，学生将有机会获得世界领先的，伪匿名的，安全的数据集，其中包含该地区所有学校儿童的记录，这些记录具有丰富的信息，对于建立和验证基于代理的模型至关重要。此外，该项目还将与地方政府的专家合作，确保项目的设计、实施和成果可直接用于制定有可能改善许多年轻人生活的政策。重要的是，该项目将探讨导致儿童成为NEET的一般因素;通过研究不会发现真实的儿童。

In the UK, after finishing their exams at age 16 children must undertake a further two years of education, employment and training. However, large numbers of children do not participate in this final stage in their compulsory education, becoming 'NEET' (not in education, employment, or training). There are a wide range of events that may predispose someone to becoming NEET at 16, and these can often occur at a very young age, so identifying the most important causes is extremely complicated. As such, designing policies that are aimed at identifying and, ideally, preventing these negative influences can be extremely challenging.A method that might hold promise in modelling the individuals and systems that cause NEET outcomes is that of Agent-Based Modelling (ABM). ABM is characterised by models that represent individuals directly, simulating their behaviour and actions over time. Hence such a method might be ideal for exploring the events, people, and systems that all influence a young person over a long time period (from birth to age 16) with the aim of identifying pivotal events or behaviours that may correlate with becoming NEET in later life. Such predictions are inherently extremely uncertain, so this project will also develop, for the first time, a probabilistic agent-based model that represents model elements (variables, functions, outputs, etc) in a probabilistic way that captures the uncertainty in the system directly.The project will be based at the University of Leeds and affiliated with the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research. As part of the Centre the student will have access to a world-leading, pseudo-anonymised, secure dataset that contains records for all school children in the region with rich information that will be essential for building and validating the agent-based model. In addition, the project will collaborate with experts in local government to ensure that the project design, implementation and results can be of direct use for developing policies that will have the potential to improve the lives of many young people. Importantly, the project will explore the factors that lead to children becoming NEET in general; no real children will be identified through the research.