Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many apprentices there were in the technology sector in (a) the UK, (b) the South East and (c) Woking constituency in the most recent year for which data is available.

The most recent statistics on apprenticeship starts by industry sector covers the academic years 2012/13 to 2016/17 and are published at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/apprenticeships-in-england-by-industry-characteristics.

The UK Standard Industrial Classification of economic activities does not include a specific category for the technology sector. However, the ‘Information and communication’ category includes several specific sub-sectors related to technology (e.g. telecommunications, computer programming and information service activities).

In 2016/17 there were 9,410 starts in the information/communication sector in the UK and 1,440 starts in the information/communication sector in the South East.

Data is not published at constituency level so the number of starts in the Woking constituency is not available.