Every young person should be guaranteed a job if they are unemployed for more than two years, the Government’s official inquiry into last summer’s riots has recommended.

The study, ordered by David Cameron, also said schools should be fined if pupils leave without learning how to read and write.

And it suggested schools and social services should routinely contact absent fathers about their children, in an attempt to make them take an interest in their child.

The recommendations were included in the report by the Riots and Communities Victims Panel, which was launched by the Prime Minister last year as part of the Government’s official investigation into riots and looting across the country.

Three Birmingham men, Haroon Jahan, aged 21, Shahzad Ali, aged 30, and Abdul Musavir, aged 31, were killed when they were hit by a car in Winson Green during the riots.

Officers of West Midlands Police were attacked by gangs with baseball bats, had their cars rammed, and were apparently shot at.

The panel, chaired by Darra Singh, chief executive of Jobcentre Plus, visited Birmingham on a number of occasions during the inquiry and held a public meeting in Handsworth last October.

The report pointed out that a fifth of youngsters leave school with the reading ability below that expected of an 11-year-old.

It said: “Given that we spend anywhere between £6,000 and £18,000 per year on each child’s education we believe no one should leave school without basic literacy skills.

“We recommend that schools failing to raise the literacy rate of a child to an age appropriate standard should cover the financial cost of raising their attainment when they move onto a new provider.”

The report also said every school should be required to build to develop and publish policies on “building character”, to teach youngsters the difference between right and wrong.

Some children grow up without a single positive adult figure in their lives, the report added.

It continued: “Public services should take steps to ensure all children have a positive role model (from a child’s wider family or from the local community).

“Where it is in the best interests of the child to do so, we recommend that absent fathers should be contacted by statutory social services and schools about their children as a matter of course.”

Government and public services should do more to fight unemployment, the report said. It called on the Government to “provide a job guarantee for all young people who have been out of work for two years or more.”

And it called on advertising watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority to work with schools to teach children that they don’t need the latest trainers or mobile phones to be happy.

Mr Singh said: “We must give everyone a stake in society. There are people bumping along the bottom, unable to change their lives.

"When people don’t feel they have a reason to stay out of trouble, the consequences for communities can be devastating – as we saw last August.”

? More details at the Riots and Communities Victims Panel website: riotspanel.independent.gov.uk