Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of young people out of (a) work, (b) education and (c) training in Liverpool Walton constituency.

The department publishes national statistics on those not in education, employment or training (NEET) for England from the labour force survey for young people aged 16 to 24. However, these are only published at national and regional level due to limitations with sample sizes for lower-level geographies. Therefore, NEET rates for young people aged 16 to 24 cannot be provided for the area requested. The available statistics can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/neet-statistics-annual-brief.

Local authorities are required to encourage, enable or assist young people’s participation in education or training and return management information for young people aged 16 and 17. This data shows that of the 10,372 young people aged 16 and 17-years-old who were known to Liverpool local authority around the end of 2022 (average of December 2022, January 2023 and February 2023), 885 were NEET or their activity was not known (530 known to be NEET and 355 young people whom the local authority could not confirm their activity). This data is published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neet-and-participation-local-authority-figures. These are not national statistics but published as transparency data so some caution should be taken if using these figures. Data is not available for Liverpool, Walton constituency.

In addition, 16 to 18 destination measures are published. These official statistics show the percentage of pupils not continuing to a sustained education, apprenticeship or employment destination in the year after completing 16 to 18 study, that is 6 months of continual activity. This can be used as a proxy for NEET at age 18. Data for Liverpool Walton is available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/55eab43f-7467-408e-90c8-08dd184e91f8. This shows that out of 357 pupils completing 16 to 18 study in the 2021/22 academic year in Liverpool Walton, 39 pupils were not recorded as having a sustained destination in the 2022/23, and 23 pupils did not have their activity captured.