Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many students in full-time education have completed a work experience placement of (a) five days and (b) more than five days in each academic year since 2010-11.

The careers statutory guidance makes it clear that schools and colleges should offer every young person at least one experience of a workplace by age 16 and a further experience by age 18. This captures a range of activities such as job shadowing, workplace visits and volunteering. This guidance is accessible at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/careers-guidance-provision-for-young-people-in-schools.

Data on experiences of the workplace is captured by the Careers and Enterprise Company and their latest findings are available at: https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/our-evidence/evidence-and-reports/insight-briefing-gatsby-benchmark-results-2022-2023/. This data is based on a national dataset of 4,534 state-funded secondary schools and colleges. In the 2022/2023 academic year, 68% of schools reported that the majority of students had some experience of the workplace by the end of year 11, and over 77% of schools reported that their students had experience of workplaces in year 12 or year 13.

At post-16, pupils have access to work placement opportunities through the T level programme. T levels are designed to equip students for skilled employment, whilst also providing a high-quality route to further study, including apprenticeships, higher technical education and degree level study. The programme includes a T level industry placement where students spend a minimum of 315 hours working with external employer(s), which equates to approximately 45 days. Since T levels were first introduced in 2020, 94% of the 2020 cohort and 94.9% of the 2021 cohort have completed their industry placement. This is a total of 4250 students who have successfully completed their industry placements.