Learners in further education, apprenticeships and community learning by provider, provision type and demographic information
Next update expected:March 2026
Updates
- 26th February 2026
- Dataset first published.
Main information
- Designation
- Official statistics
- Data provider 1
- Welsh Government
- Data source 1
- Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD)
- Data provider 2
- Welsh Government
- Data source 2
- Post-16 Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC)
- Data provider 3
- Welsh Government
- Data source 3
- Lifelong Learning Wales Record (LLWR)
- Time period covered
- August 2016 to August 2025
Overview
- Summary of dataset and variables
Learners taking further education in colleges, local authority community learning, or apprenticeships.
Higher education, degree apprenticeships and sixth forms are not included.
The dataset contains the following variables:
Academic year: Runs from 1st August to 31st July.
Provision type: Further education includes learners studying A levels and other general qualifications, as well as learners studying vocational qualifications (for example BTECs). A learner is counted as in part-time further education if they have taken no full-time further education at the provider. Local authority community learning is community learning delivered by local authorities, it includes learning contracted in from a further education institution.
Provider: The lead provider of the learning. If a provider has merged, historical data includes all previous providers. Historical providers are providers that don't exist as lead providers in the most recent year.
Age group: Age of the learner at 31st August of the academic year.
Gender: It is displayed as it is collected in the data, but this does not follow best practice. We will evaluate how gender and/or sex should be collected in the Lifelong Learning Record Wales (LLWR).
Demographic measure: Types of characteristic information.
Demographic value: The individual characteristics of the demographic measure.
Deprivation of home neighbourhood: The Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) quintile of the area based on the learner's postcode.
Ever free school meal (FSM) eligible: Eligibility for free school meals is a proxy measure for an individual’s experience of deprivation. A learner is defined in this report as “ever eligible for Free School meals” if they were eligible for free school meals at any point during secondary school in Wales. If they were not eligible in any year of secondary school in Wales they are described as ‘never eligible for Free School meals’. Learners who could not be matched to a secondary school record in Wales are categorised as unknown.
Ethnic background: Categorised by 5 broad groups, and 18 sub-groups.
Learning difficulty or impairment: Learning difficulty or impairment types only relate to learners with a learning difficulty or impairment that impacts on their ability to learn and/or use facilities of a kind generally supplied by the learning provider, and are based on the learner's own assessment of their health.
- Data collection or calculation
The Lifelong Learning Wales Record is the data collection system employed by the Welsh Government to enable FE, WBL and local authority community earning providers to submit on-line individualised data on learners, their learning programmes, activities and awards.
Welsh Government systems load the data on to a database to facilitate analysis. The database is then transferred to Medr for processing and analysing. Further information on LLWR including user support manuals can be found on the Welsh Government’s website.
The data used in these statistics is extracted from the LLWR on the Thursday of the third full week of December.
The primary purpose of the LLWR is to provide FE/WBL/local authority community learning data to facilitate the planning and funding of learning delivery. The LLWR data are also a basis for monitoring of performance and outcomes, informing strategy and development and the provision of statistics on FE/WBL/local authority community learning in Wales.
- Statistical quality
Statisticians within Medr review the data and query any anomalies with the LLWR data collection team and, where relevant, with learning providers before tables are published. The LLWR data underlying this table are intended to be final, for non-funding purposes.
- Rounding applied
All figures in the table have been rounded to the closest multiple of 5. All non-zero values less than 5 have been suppressed and are denoted by [c].
- Related reports
Published by
- Organisation
- Medr
- Contact email
- statistics@medr.cymru