Published
This document describes the data included in the ‘Participation in education, training and employment’ National Statistics release’s underlying data. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in a new tab) and is intended to meet at least three stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab).
The underlying data files include national participation estimates for 16-18 year olds in England and are broken down by (academic) age, gender, institution type, whether full-time (FT) or part-time (PT), and by highest study aim.
The methodology accompanying the release should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.
The underlying data files contain unrounded figures as estimated from the administrative and survey data as outlined in the accompanying methodology.
No suppression has been applied, as the data is not considered sensitive and no additional characteristic or geography variables are included to enable individuals to be accurately identified.
The data in this publication covers young people who reside in England, and is based on their academic age, that is their age at the start of the academic year, 31st August. The publication includes data on individual ages between 16 and 18 as well as for combined age groups, 16-17 and 16-18. The data is at national level only and cannot be disaggregated to sub-national levels, or by characteristics other than gender.
Participation estimates are broken down by (academic) age, gender, institution type, whether full-time (FT) or part-time (PT), and by highest study aim. This publication provides the official annual estimates of participation and NEET (not in education, employment or training) in England.
The publication also provides a robust estimate of the number and proportion of 16-18 year olds not in education and training (NET) and looks at the labour market status for both those young people identified as NET and those participating in education or training. Those identified as NET and not in employment are classified as NEET.
Local authority (LA) estimates of participation in education and work-based learning by 16- to 17-year-olds are no longer published as part of this release. The Department for Education publishes transparency data for local participation based on local authority management information, here: Participation in education and training by local authority. (opens in a new tab)
The files are in comma separated values format (.csv) with UTF-8 encoding.
The underlying data files contain unrounded figures as estimated from the administrative and survey data as outlined in the accompanying technical documentation.
No suppression has been applied, as the data is not considered sensitive and no additional characteristic or geography variables are included to enable individuals to be accurately identified.
Symbols used in the underlying data are as follows:
| Symbol | Meaning |
| z | When an observation is not applicable |
All data files associated with this releases are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.
Number and proportion of population participating in education, training and employment by age, gender and labour market status.
Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:
| Variable name | Variable description |
|---|---|
| age | Academic age |
| category | Activity |
| gender | Gender |
| labour_market_status | Labour market status |
| number | Number |
| percent | Percent |
Number and proportion of population participating in education or training by age, gender, institution type and highest qualification aim.
Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:
| Variable name | Variable description |
|---|---|
| age | Academic age |
| gender | Gender |
| institution_or_apprenticeship | Institution type |
| mode_of_study | Full or part-time |
| number | Number |
| percent | Percent |
| qualification_sublevel | Qualification |
Summary NEET estimates from related Department for Education publications: NEET age 16 to 24 and NEET and participation: local authority figures (opens in a new tab). These have been used for comparisons between the different NEET measures.
Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:
| Variable name | Variable description |
|---|---|
| age | Age group - Filter by age group. Not all comparisons are possible with either age selection. |
| NCCIS | NCCIS NEET/not known |
| NEETLFS | DfE LFS NEET |
| NEETLFSLower | DfE LFS NEET lower bound (95% confidence interval) |
| NEETLFSUpper | DfE LFS NEET upper bound (95% confidence interval) |
| NEETParticipation | Participation release NEET |
Number in population, proportions participating in education and apprenticeships and proportions NEET as previously published (population based on 2011 census) and rebased population (based on Dynamic Population Model (DPM)) by age and gender for 2011-2021.
Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:
| Variable name | Variable description |
|---|---|
| age | Academic age |
| gender | Gender |
| NEET_new_number | Number NEET based on revised population estimates |
| NEET_new_percent | Percent of population NEET based on revised population estimates |
| NEET_old_number | Number NEET as previously published |
| NEET_old_percent | Percent of population NEET as previously published |
| participation_new_number | Number participating in Education and Apprenticeships based on new population estimates |
| participation_new_percent | Percent of population participating in Education and Apprenticeships based on new population estimates |
| participation_old_number | Number participating in Education and Apprenticeships as previously published |
| participation_old_percent | Percent of population participating in Education and Apprenticeships as previously published |
| population_new | Revised population (based on ONS Dynamic Population Model) |
| population_old | Population as previously published (ONS mid-year estimates based on the 2011 census) |