This article reports on a study into literacy education for young people identified as not in education, employment or training (so-called NEETs) and who were attending courses with further education (FE) providers. The study aimed to gain insights into how literacy is being taught to NEET students, to identify factors that influenced delivery and to gather teachers' and student teachers' views on what constituted effective practice in this area. This small-scale study researched the ways in which literacy classes were delivered in 14-19 provision across a range of further education settings. It focused specifically on Foundation Learning and functional skills classes. The participants worked in 11 different FE settings in the West Midlands region of England. These settings included colleges, training providers, a sixth form college and a dedicated "unit" within a college with a distinct curriculum offer. The data was gathered from student teachers' reflective journal entries and follow-up interviews. Interviews were also conducted with experienced literacy teachers in different providers. The data showed that much of the provision for NEET students taught literacy through a technical approach that included a focus on grammar, word classes and apostrophe use. Teachers in these same providers also reported low levels of engagement amongst their students. More positively, the research also discovered literacy provision that engaged with students through innovative holistic curricula. However, existing funding and assessment regimes as well as traditional notions of literacy were found to present barriers to this kind of provision. The study concluded that existing marketised funding arrangements and prescriptive curricula militate against the (re)engagement of students that fall into NEET categories.