Northern Ireland Executive
30 Jan 2023, 22 GMT+10
The Department for the Economy has today published a statistical bulletin: Essential Skills Enrolments and Outcomes in Northern Ireland from 2017/18 to 2021/22.
The Department for the Economy has today published a statistical bulletin: Essential Skills Enrolments and Outcomes in Northern Ireland from 2017/18 to 2021/22.
This publication presents a range of analysis regarding the numbers and characteristics of those enrolling and qualifying in Essential Skills in numeracy, literature and information communication and technology (ICT) since 2017/18.
Key points include:
Since 2017/18, 45,832 individuals have participated in 133,026 Essential Skills enrolments and achieved 80,489 qualifications.
The 2021/22 academic year saw increases in Essential Skills enrolments and participants. For a variety of reasons, including a dip in the 16-19-year-old population (the main age group taking Essential Skills), improvements in GCSE grades, and Covid-19 related grading arrangements/restrictions, the number of enrolments fell each year from 30,430 in 2017/18 to 23,825 in 2020/21, before increasing by 0.5% to 23,932 in 2021/22.
The number of qualifications issued in 2021/22 (13,513) was 26.5% lower than in 2017/18 (18,394), a larger percentage decrease than that for enrolments over the same period (21.4%; from 30,430 to 23,932).
Those aged 16-19 accounted for two-thirds (66.2%) of enrolments in the past five years, although their share fell to 60.0% in 2021/22; in contrast, the share of those aged 25 and over in 2021/22 (19.7%) was higher than its recent average (17.2%).
Over the past five years, 56.8% of enrolments on Essential Skills courses have been from male students.
Generally, the more deprived an area is, the higher the number of Essential Skills enrolments from those living in that area. Over the past five years, over half of enrolments (50.7%) have been from the two most deprived 'quintiles'. In 2021/22, 6,722 (28.1%) enrolments were from the most deprived quintile, while 2,323 (9.7%) were from the least deprived quintile.
From 2017/18 to 2020/21, Numeracy was the most popular subject (39.3%), while Literacy was second most popular (33.9%), followed by ICT (26.7%). Although numeracy remained the most popular subject in 2021/22, with 35.7% of enrolments, ICT (33.1%) overtook literacy (31.2%).
Two in every three (66.6%) Essential Skills enrolments result in a qualification being issued. Numeracy accounted for 43.4% of qualifications issued in the most recent academic year, while a further third (32.9%) were in Literacy and 23.8% were in ICT.
Almost half (49.7%) of Essential Skills qualifications issued since 2017/18 have been at Level 2 (equivalent to GCSE grades A*-C), a further 32.4% at Level 1 and 17.4% at Entry Level.
This full statistical bulletin and other information is available to download on the DfE website.
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