Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to calculate the number of experienced adult learners undertaking electrical training via the (a) experienced worker route and (b) an equivalent national vocational qualification.

Adult, those aged over 19 years old, government-funded further education and skills learning in England is recorded on the individualised learner record and published in the ‘Further education and skills’ statistics publication.

In the 2023/24 academic year, there were 33 adult education and training learning aim enrolments on the level 3 Electrotechnical Experienced Worker Qualification. There were 3,017 enrolments on other level 3 learning aims that are electrical-related.

It should be noted that:

(1) Aim enrolments are a count of enrolments at aim level. Learners will be counted for each aim they are studying and so can be counted more than once.

(2) Learners that are self-funding will not be included.

(3) Electrical-related learning aims are identified as those with ‘Electric’ or ‘Electro’ in the title. The ‘Electrotechnical Experienced Worker Qualification’ is the aim awarded by City & Guilds. There may be other relevant learning aims that are not readily identifiable as related to the electrical profession that are not included here.

(4) The department does not hold information on how much prior experience of the electrical trade that learners taking these aims have.