Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) from Modern Apprenticeships: 2020-21: Scotland

Methodology

Background methodology

Additional information:

Additional detailed information on the LEO data is available in releases on the Department for Education website.
Further detailed information on Modern Apprenticeships in Scotland is available on the Skills Development Scotland website.

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) data collection:

SDS collect data on MA leavers from the current Funding Information and Processing System (FIPS) and prior to 2016 information was collected from the Corporate Training System (CTS). All data is entered and maintained by organisations contracted with Skills Development Scotland to deliver Modern Apprenticeships.

Data integrity checks are made by SDS on an ongoing basis. Final checks are completed prior to production of reports.

Data Quality

Users should be aware of some additional details and limitations around the data included in this publication;

Mode:

The employment data covers those with records submitted through the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system and the Self-Assessed (SA) system. Neither systems collect information on the number of hours worked; therefore, whether an individual is working full-time or part-time cannot be ascertained. There is ongoing work to explore the opportunity to link the LEO data to the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), which will allow for a subset of the LEO data to contain information on full-time and part-time work patterns

Career Path:

Different MAs will lead to different career paths, with some careers requiring additional training from their employer after completion of their apprenticeship. Some individuals may change career entirely, and the occupation they are in five years after completing their MA may not reflect the occupational grouping of the completed MA.

Completion of Modern Apprenticeships:

This release focuses on individuals who have successfully completed their MA. Those who have withdrawn early or not completed their MA are excluded from this release, in line with other LEO data statistical releases published by Scottish Government.
Time period:

The time period for which employment and earnings data is reported in this publication is five years year after completion. This refers to the full tax year five years after completion. So, for those who completed their MA in the 2015/16 tax year, employment and earnings outcomes relate to the 2020/21 tax year. As MAs are aligned to tax year rather than an academic year, this differs from the time period covered in our LEO release for universities and colleges.

Sustained employment:

Completers are considered to be in sustained employment only if they were employed for at least one day for five out of the six months between October and March of the tax year in question or if they had a self-employment record in that tax year. Only completers in sustained employment are included in this release.

Total earnings:

Total earnings figures are included for completers who have a valid earnings record (P14 or SA), and who are recorded as being in sustained employment in the 2020/21 tax year.

For each MA completer, the PAYE earnings reported for them on the HMRC P14 data for a given tax year are divided by the number of days recorded in employment across that same tax year. This provides an average daily wage that is then multiplied by the number of days in the tax year to calculate their annualised earnings.

This calculation has been used to maintain consistency with figures reported for further education learners after study. It provides students with an indication of the earnings they might receive once in stable and sustained employment.

The annualised earnings calculated are slightly higher than the raw earnings reported in the tax year. This is because the earnings of those who did not work for the entire tax year will be higher when annualised, however this difference decreases as time elapses after MA completion. All earnings presented are nominal. They represent the cash amount an individual was paid and are not adjusted for inflation (the general increase in the price of goods and services).

The annualised PAYE earnings and raw self-assessment earnings are then added together to calculate the total earnings. If an individual has earnings only through PAYE or self-assessment, then their total earnings will be equal to their PAYE or self-assessment earnings.

These self-assessment earnings only includes profits from partnership enterprises and profit from sole-trader enterprises. As the self-assessment data does not include any information on the number of days worked for a tax year, the earnings cannot be annualised.

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) and Self-employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS):

As earnings in this release relate to the 2020/21 tax year, this overlaps with the time period in which the CJRS and SEISS operated. These schemes were designed to support individuals through the Coronavirus pandemic, and ran throughout 2020 and 2021.

For the CJRS, typically 80% of a furloughed employee's wage was paid for by HMRC, with some employers opting to fund the remaining 20% of the wage. For the SEISS, eligible individuals were able to claim a taxable grant at multiple occasions over the course of the pandemic, which varied between 70% and 80% of their three months' average trading profits, capped at between £6,570 and £7,500.

Given this, earnings from this time period may have been influenced by these schemes.

Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD):

The SIMD ranks small areas (data zones) in Scotland from most deprived to least deprived. The SIMD overall rank is calculated from the individual ranks of seven domains: Income, Employment, Health, Education/skills, Housing, Geographic access, and Crime. The quintiles represent 5 equal groups of the SIMD ranks, with quintile 1 representing the 20% most deprived areas, and quintile 5 representing the 20% least deprived areas.

This release uses SIMD 2012 as this was the index available during the 2015/16 tax year, which aligns with the completer cohort for this publication.

Further detailed information on SIMD ranks is available on the SIMD website.

Age:

The age of an individual at the start of their MA is used in this release as this aligns with how SDS publish by age and funding bands in their statistical releases.

Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ) level:

The SVQ level is recorded by SDS in the MA data. MAs were reported based on SVQ level until 2018/19, at which point they were then reported based on SCQF level. Given that the cohort used in this release is MAs that completed in 2015/16, SVQ level has been used to maintain accuracy to the level of qualification, as SCQF to SVQ mapping exercises may result in some erroneous matches due to inconsistent alignment across levels for some MAs.

Suppression and rounding:

In line with disclosure control rules, information based on 10 or fewer individuals has been supressed. This aligns with our previous releases of LEO data. All earnings are presented to the nearest £100.