England and Wales Dep — Current theme: Learning & Language

Since 1951, the census has gathered information on what point in the education system individuals reached: did they leave school as soon as was legal, without qualifications? did they get GCSEs? and did they go to university and get a degree? In general, this information covers everyone of working age, so it has to be seen as an 'average' of decisions to stay on at school or leave taken during the forty or fifty years prior to the census.

Unfortunately, the variation in what was reported by different censuses means none of our measures can be presented for every census, and also that the precise definitions of measures vary from census to census, so precise rates cannot generally be compared over time, only relative positions.

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We hold these detailed statistics for Unnamed Unit, which we graph and tabulate here:

Available datasets	Period covered	Variables (number of categories)
Age at Termination of Education	1951	Terminal Education Age (5)
Age at Termination of Education	1961	Sex (2) Terminal Education Age (6)
Educational Level: Graduate	1951 to 2011	Obtaining Degreed (2)
Educational Level: Unqualified	1951 to 2011	Obtaining basic qualifications (2)

Read more about how we hold statistics here.