Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate he has made of the number of young people aged 16 to 24 years who are pursuing an apprenticeship in (a) West Worcestershire and (b) England.

The table below shows the number of learners aged 16 to 24, participating on apprenticeships in the West Worcestershire Parliamentary Constituency, and England, from the 2017/18 to 2019/20 academic years:

To note:

1. Data source is the Individualised Learner Record (ILR).
2. Volumes are rounded to the nearest 10.
3. The 2019/20 data covers the period affected by COVID-19 and the nationwide lockdown (i.e. from March 2020 onwards), which will have impacted on apprenticeship and traineeship learning and also provider reporting behaviour via the ILR.
4. The above West Worcestershire PCON figures - and further breakdowns - are available in this link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/fast-track/8f8ab92a-20f0-44f5-b973-3b0ffe72d1a1.
5. The above England figures - and further breakdowns - are available in this link: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/fast-track/105ced16-d615-4f77-80ad-ba362d2ca443.
6. Participation is the count of learners that participated at any point during the year. Learners undertaking more than 1 course will appear only once in the grand total.
7. Age for apprenticeship participation is based on age as of 31 August of the academic year.
8. Age is based upon self-declaration by the learner.
9. Geography is based upon the home postcode of the learner. Where the postcode is outside of England or not known it is included in the 'Other' category.
10. Geographies are taken from the National Statistics Postcode Lookup based on boundaries as of April 2019.