Calendar year 2024

Participation in education, training and employment age 16 to 18

Participation and not in education, employment or training (NEET) figures ages 16 to 18 in England. Includes institution type and qualification aim breakdowns.

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  • Participation Headlines

    National

    Number and proportion of population participating in education, training and employment by age, sex and labour market status.

    Number of rows
    35,340
    Indicators
    • Number
    • Percent of population
    Filters
    • Academic age
    • Activity
    • Labour market status
    Time period
    1994 to 2024
    Data set information page for Participation Headlines
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  • Participation Institutions and Qualifications

    National

    Number and proportion of population participating in education or training by age, sex, institution type and highest qualification aim.

    Number of rows
    830,025
    Indicators
    • Number
    • Percent of population
    Filters
    • Academic age
    • Full or part-time
    • Institution type
    Time period
    1994 to 2024
    Data set information page for Participation Institutions and Qualifications
    Create table using Participation Institutions and Qualifications

  • Participation NEET other sources

    National

    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

    Number of rows
    122
    Indicators
    • DfE LFS NEET
    • DfE LFS NEET lower bound (95% confidence interval)
    • DfE LFS NEET upper bound (95% confidence interval)
    Filters
    • Age group
    • Quarter
    Time period
    2010 to 2025
    Data set information page for Participation NEET other sources
    Create table using Participation NEET other sources
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Data guidance

Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

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 new tab) and is intended to meet at least three stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab) (opens in 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 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
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Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Participation in education, training and employment age 16 to 18 statistics and data:

Post-16 statistics team

Email: post16.statistics@education.gov.uk
Contact name: Sally Marshall

Press office

If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

Public enquiries

If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:

Phone: 0370 000 2288

Opening times

Monday to Friday from 9.30am to 5.30pm (closed on bank holidays)

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