Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many people aged (a)15, (b)16 and (c) 17 applied to join the British Army in (i) 2015, (ii) 2016, (iii) 2017 and (iv) to date in 2018.
The number of people aged 15, 16 and 17 who applied to join the Army in the requested years is shown in the following table:
Recruiting Year | Age at Contact | Number |
2015-16 | 17 | 7,290 |
16 | 6,930 | |
15 | 3,740 | |
2016-17 | 17 | 9,400 |
16 | 8,500 | |
15 | 4,980 | |
2017-18 | 17 | 7,900 |
16 | 7,230 | |
15 | 4,130 |
Notes:
Data is a single service estimate and not an official statistic, figures for 2017/18 are provided with low confidence due to implementation issues with the Defence Recruiting System between November 2017 and March 218.
Data includes Regulars, Reserves, Other Ranks and Officers.
For presentational purposes the figures have been rounded to ten to improve the clarity of output and convey an appropriate level of precision to users.