Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people aged 16-19 were not in employment, education or training in (a) Ellesmere Port and Neston constituency, (b) Cheshire West and Chester unitary authority and (c) the North West of England in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

Figures for the number of people aged 16-19 not in employment, education or training (NEET) are not available at unitary authority or constituency level.

The Department for Education’s definitive estimates for young people aged 16-18 NEET in England are published in the National Statistics release ‘Participation in education, training and employment’. This can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-neet. These estimates cannot be disaggregated to lower level geographies.

The Department for Education also publishes estimates for England and the English regions based on quarterly Labour Force Survey (LFS) data. However, due to sample size limitations in the LFS data, it is not possible to produce reliable estimates at unitary authority or constituency level.

Local authority level NEET estimates for England are published annually as transparency data from the department’s National Client Caseload Information System (NCCIS). For young people aged 16-17, local authorities are required to monitor the extent to which they are meeting their duty to participate in education or training through the NCCIS and figures for 2016/17 and 2017/18 are provided in the table attached. Prior to 2016/17, young people aged 18 were also tracked by local authorities and figures for 2013/14 to 2015/16 are also provided in the table attached.

It should also be noted that there is a break in the time series as figures prior to 2016/17 had an adjustment applied to the NEET figures to include those whose activity was not known who were likely to be NEET. Post 2016/17 this adjustment was no longer applied and the NEET figures include all people whose activity was not known (in order to incentivise local authorities to better track their young people); as a result, these figures should be interpreted with caution.

Estimates for academic year 2017/18 are published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neet-and-participation-local-authority-figures.

Data prior to 2018 can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neet-data-by-local-authority-2012-16-to-18-year-olds-not-in-education-employment-or-training.

Also available are national statistics showing the destinations of pupils after key stage 4 (i.e. year 11, usually aged 16) and key stage 5 (after A levels or other level 3 qualifications, usually aged 18). See https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/destinations-of-ks4-and-ks5-pupils-2017.

This release shows the proportion of students staying in education or going into employment or an apprenticeship for at least 2 terms. It also shows the percentage of students who do not sustain their activity and can be used as an approximation for numbers NEET. Time series data by local authority and parliamentary constituency covering destination years 2010/11 to 2016/17 is available as part of the additional and underlying data from the statistics page.