FOI REF: FOI-2024-1942
You asked
Please could you tell me where I can find the latest statistics regarding software engineering, software development, and software technician apprenticeships in the UK, detailing the drop-out rate, completion rate, and qualification breakdown (i.e. level 3, 4, etc.)?
We said
Thanks for your request.
Unfortunately, we do not hold the exact information requested.
Our Labour Force Survey/Annual Population Survey published datasets unfortunately do not have information that would fully answer this request. As detailed in volume 3 of our user guidance, we capture information on current and complete apprenticeships and the level of apprenticeship achieved or ongoing, as well as whether a completed apprenticeship is part of the respondent’s main job. We do not capture apprenticeships that were not completed, so we do not hold a drop-out or completion rate.
The other issue is that we do not have software engineering, software development or software technicians as occupations in the SOC 2020 classification.
However, we can provide some estimates for apprenticeships as detailed above based on occupations or groups of occupations. We would need to know which occupations (as defined by SOC 2020) are of interest to create bespoke analysis. Requests for bespoke analysis can be made to the socialsurveys@ons.gov.uk mailbox. Please note, such requests are subject to disclosure controls, resources, legal frameworks, and an agreement of costs in line with the ONS Charging Policy.
We do also capture the occupation of apprenticeships, however the sample sizes for these tend to be very small, so we would need to assess whether these would be eligible for inclusion.
The Department for Education (DfE) produce apprenticeship statistics and these may be of use. If you have any questions on this data, please get in touch with DfE directly.