The Department for Education has published the further education and skills statistics and the apprenticeships and traineeships statistics (and supplementary tables here) for the first two quarters of the 2019/20 academic year (August 2019 to January 2020). The FE statistics show that participation in government-funded FE (including apprenticeships) in this period has fallen to 1,373,800 from 1,442,500 in the same period in 2018/19, a decrease of 4.8%. Achievements also fell to 422,600 from 493,300, a decrease of 14.3%. The apprenticeship starts reported to date have decreased to 198,600 from 214,200 in the first two quarters of 2018/19, a decrease of 7.3%. Commentary on the apprenticeship statistics can be read here. The DfE has also published the national achievement rates tables for 2018 to 2019. The data shows that the overall achievement rate for apprenticeships fell last year by 2.2 percentage points to 64.7%. More analysis and comment on this can be read here. The data also shows that apprenticeship standards had an achievement rate of 46.6%. The IfATE have responded to this data to say that this is to be expected with the introduction of new curriculum and assessment regimes.
