Calendar year 2023

Participation in education, training and employment age 16 to 18

Data guidance

Published

Description

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, sex, 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.

Coverage

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 age and sex.

Participation estimates are broken down by (academic) age, sex, 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)

File formats and conventions

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 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.

Symbols used in the underlying data are as follows:

SymbolMeaning
zWhen an observation is not applicable

Data files

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.

Participation Headlines

Filename
headlines_rebased2024.csv
Geographic levels
National
Time period
1994 to 2023
Content
Number and proportion of population participating in education, training and employment by age, sex and labour market status.
Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable nameVariable description
ageAcademic age - Age as at 31st August (start of the academic year)
categoryActivity - Main participation type (education, apprenticeships, training)/employment/not in education, employment or training (NEET)
labour_market_statusLabour market status
numberNumber
percentPercent of population
sexSex

Participation Institutions and Qualifications

Filename
inst_and_quals_rebased2024.csv
Geographic levels
National
Time period
1994 to 2023
Content
Number and proportion of population participating in education or training by age, sex, institution type and highest qualification aim.
Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable nameVariable description
ageAcademic age - Age as at 31st August (start of the academic year)
institution_type_minorInstitution type
mode_of_studyFull or part-time
numberNumber
participation_measureParticipation measure
percentPercent of population
qualification_sublevelQualification
sexSex

Participation NEET other sources

Filename
neet_other_sources_2024.csv
Geographic levels
National
Time period
2010 to 2024
Content
Summary NEET estimates from related Department for Education publications.
Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable nameVariable description
ageAcademic age group - Filter by age group. Age as at 31st August (start of the academic year).
NCCISNCCIS NEET/not known
NEETLFSDfE LFS NEET
NEETLFSLowerDfE LFS NEET lower bound (95% confidence interval)
NEETLFSUpperDfE LFS NEET upper bound (95% confidence interval)
NEETParticipationParticipation release NEET
quarterQuarter - Filter by quarter of the year (select Q4 as end of year estimates for the participation and NCCIS releases)