Calendar year 2024

Participation in education, training and employment age 16 to 18

Data guidance

Published 26 June 2025

Description

This document describes the data included in the ‘Participation in education, training and employment’ accredited official statistics release’s underlying data. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in a new tab) (opens in a new tab) and is intended to meet at least three stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab) (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) (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:

Symbol	Meaning
z	When 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_2025_data.csv
• Geographic levels: National
• Time period: 1994 to 2024
• 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 name	Variable description
age	Academic age - Age as at 31st August (start of the academic year)
category	Activity - Main participation type (education, apprenticeships, training)/employment/not in education, employment or training (NEET)
labour_market_status	Labour market status
number	Number
percent	Percent of population
sex	Sex

Footnotes

1. The Labour Market Status (employed, unemployed, Inactive) of the 16-18 population and proportions in wider training (e.g. Employer funded training not captured by DfE administrative data) are estimated from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The LFS has been reweighted to account for population revisions back to 2019 meaning comparisons prior to this point should be viewed with some caution. In addition, an increasing number of missing responses related to education status at age 16 have led DfE to revise the methodology for reapportioning these cases from 2019 which may also lead to a discontinuity. See  accompanying methodology document for further information.

Participation Institutions and Qualifications

• Filename: Inst_and_quals_2025_data.csv
• Geographic levels: National
• Time period: 1994 to 2024
• 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 name	Variable description
age	Academic age - Age as at 31st August (start of the academic year)
institution_type_minor	Institution type
mode_of_study	Full or part-time
number	Number
participation_measure	Participation measure
percent	Percent of population
qualification_sublevel	Qualification
sex	Sex

Footnotes

1. Pre-2023, entry level qualifications were included within 'Other qualifications'. 'Other qualifications' include non regulated qualifications and funded work experience placement aims. Young people in special schools and Pupil Referral Units (PRUs), for whom there are no qualification breakdowns, are also included under 'Other qualifications'.
2. The Labour Market Status (employed, unemployed, Inactive) of the 16-18 population and proportions in wider training (e.g. Employer funded training not captured by DfE administrative data) are estimated from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The LFS has been reweighted to account for population revisions back to 2019 meaning comparisons prior to this point should be viewed with some caution. In addition, an increasing number of missing responses related to education status at age 16 have led DfE to revise the methodology for reapportioning these cases from 2019 which may also lead to a discontinuity. See  accompanying methodology document for further information.
3. The ILR includes records from Higher Education Organisations (HEO) where young people are studying for qualifications below HE level. From end 2022, the HEI rows in the underlying data include those participating in HEOs from the ILR whereas previously they were included within General FE colleges. This gives a more accurate breakdown of the highest qualification at level 3 and below in HEIs.
4. Most non apprenticeship study at age 18 classified within the highest qualification aim ‘Higher education (level 4 or above)’ is at level 6 (degree level or equivalent),  with just 2% doing a level 4 or 5 qualification in 2024.

Participation NEET other sources

• Filename: NEET_other_sources_2025_data.csv
• Geographic levels: National
• Time period: 2010 to 2025
• Content:
  Summary NEET estimates from related Department for Education publications: NEET age 16 to 24 and NEET and participation: local authority figures. These have been used for comparisons between the different NEET measures

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
age	Age group - Filter by age group. Age as at 31st August (start of the academic year).
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
quarter	Quarter - Filter by quarter of the year (select Q4 as end of year estimate for the participation and NCCIS releases)

Footnotes

1. The Labour Market Status (employed, unemployed, Inactive) of the 16-18 population and proportions in wider training (e.g. Employer funded training not captured by DfE administrative data) are estimated from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The LFS has been reweighted to account for population revisions back to 2019 meaning comparisons prior to this point should be viewed with some caution. In addition, an increasing number of missing responses related to education status at age 16 have led DfE to revise the methodology for reapportioning these cases from 2019 which may also lead to a discontinuity. See  accompanying methodology document for further information.