Modern apprenticeships: earnings

Introduction to the Modern Apprenticeships LEO release

Modern Apprenticeships (MAs) provide individuals with the opportunity to secure industry-recognised qualifications at a range of levels while in employment. MAs could be a new team member or an existing employee seeking to increase their capability. MAs also provide a way for businesses to train employees to industry-recognised standards.

This experimental release describes MAs in terms of their SVQ level, as this aligns with how MAs were reported on up until 2018/19. In line with Scottish Government direction, SDS now report on MA statistics by SCQF rather than SVQ level. As this release uses both a completer cohort (2011/12) and tax year (2016/17) that pre-dated this change, it was deemed appropriate to publish on SVQ level to reflect this.

This release covers the median total earnings of those who successfully completed a MA in 2011/12, and are recorded as being in sustained employment in the 2016/17 tax year. Total earnings represent the sum of the annualised PAYE earnings and raw self-assessment earnings. If an individual has earnings only through either PAYE or self-assessment, then their total earnings will be equal to their PAYE or self-assessment earnings

The median earnings presented in this release should not be used as a way to rank occupational groupings or draw any conclusions about earnings gaps, due to the limitations of the LEO data.

• Earnings can vary greatly across different regions of the UK and Scotland. The PAYE and self-assessment systems do not collect information on the location of an individual's employment; meaning we cannot account for any regional variations.
• The PAYE and self-assessment systems do not collect information on the number of hours worked, therefore we cannot make distinctions between part time and full time earnings. As a result gender comparisons should be treated with caution as we know in general more females work part-time compared to males, and this will also apply to certain occupational groupings where there is a higher proportion of part-time workers.

As this is the first release of these data, we carried out quality assurance to ensure the outputs were broadly comparable to similar data sources and that any results were fit for purpose and robust. For this quality assurance we looked at comparable figures from:

• English LEO data for MAs
• Annual Population Survey data
• Apprenticeship Pay Survey data
• Scottish LEO data for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)

Further information about the data quality is available in the Methodology section of this release.