Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of secondary schools provide two weeks of work experience.

The department has asked the Careers and Enterprise Company (CEC) to collect national baseline data on the delivery of two weeks’ worth of work experience for every secondary pupil, across schools in England. CEC plan to publish this data by the end of 2025.

The most recently published data by CEC regarding work experience relates to the 2023/24 academic year. 76% of schools self-report that the majority of their pupils have had an experience of the workplace by the end of year 11.84% of schools report that the majority of their pupils had received experience of the workplace in year 12 or year 13.

The department recently updated careers statutory guidance to set out expectations for the 2025/26 academic year, including multiple, high quality experiences of the workplace for every pupil.