Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of the core target group of 16 to 19 year olds have (a) applied for and (b) been accepted onto a traineeship to date.

Only young people who meet the eligibility criteria set out in the Traineeships Framework for Delivery can take up a traineeship. For 2013/14, the core target group for traineeships are young people aged 16-23 who:

1. are not currently in a job and have little work experience, but who are focused on work or the prospect of it;

2. are 16-19 and qualified below Level 3 or 19-23 and have not yet achieved a full Level 2; and whom

3. providers and employers believe have a reasonable chance of being ready for employment or an apprenticeship within six months of engaging in a traineeship.

The Department for Education does not collect information centrally on traineeship applications in the same way that the Department does not collect data on applications for other pre-employment training provision.

In June we published data showing that there were 7,400 traineeships starting between August 2013 and April 2014 – the first nine months of the programme. We do not yet have reliable data to break this down by age-range and we do not collect information on the number of unsuccessful applications.

Further information on traineeships data is published online at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fe-data-library-other-statistics-and-research