Accredited official statistics

Vocational and other qualifications quarterly: Jul to Sep 2016

This bulletin covers all vocational and other types of qualifications (excluding GCSEs, AS and A levels, and the Diploma and its components) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

• From: Ofqual
• Published: 15 December 2016

Applies to England, Northern Ireland and Wales

Documents

Vocational and Other Qualifications Quarterly: July to September 2016

Ref: Ofqual/16/6133

PDF, 962 KB, 42 pages

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Tables - Vocational and Other Qualifications Quarterly July to September 2016

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 284 KB

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Table of revisions

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 11.8 KB

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Pre-release access list

MS Word Document, 12.6 KB

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Details

Main findings

1. Nearly 3.3 million certificates were awarded in 2016 Q3, a decrease of 13% on the same quarter of 2015. This is the lowest number of certificates awarded during quarter 3 in the past five years.
2. The decline in number of certificates awarded is mostly due to the decrease in the number of other general qualifications and QCF qualifications.
3. The number of available qualifications this quarter decreased by 1% from 31,600 in the previous quarter to 31,211.
4. The qualification with the most certificates this quarter was Cambridge International Level 1/Level 2 Certificate in First Language English with 196,100 certificates awarded.
5. The number of certificates issued for level 1 and level 2 qualifications both decreased by 17% on the same quarter in 2015 (to 590,600 and 924,050 respectively). The decline is mostly due to the decrease in the number of functional skills and QCF qualifications.
6. The number of certificates issued for level 3 qualifications increased by 2% (from 687,100 to 699,700).
7. The highest number of certificates awarded by sector subject area of qualification in this quarter was for ‘preparation for life and work’ (867,200 certificates).

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Datasets

The datasets used to produce this release are available for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and for each individual country.

Published 15 December 2016