Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how the Further Education Skills Index is calculated; and if she will publish any changes made to that calculation in the last 20 years.

The further education (FE) Skills Index was first published in 2019, and new data for the next academic year has been released annually since then. The first three editions were released as transparency data and are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/further-education-skills-index. A further two recent releases were published as official statistics, and are available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/further-education-skills-index.

Information on how the FE Skills Index is calculated is contained within the Methodology that accompanies the publication: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/methodology/further-education-skills-index

The main changes between the indexes is an update to the estimates of median earnings and expected percentage earnings returns (since the 2021 release, when the Index was recalculated using the updated data) and a slight presentational change (in the 2022 release) following the reclassification of some qualification levels. The 2021 release is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1003677/FE_Skills_Index_2021.pdf. Both changes are explained in the Methodology (specifically in the ‘Annex’ and ‘Changes to the presentation of reclassified Full Level 2 and Full Level 3 qualifications’ sections).