What the data shows
The overall apprenticeship achievement rate in England rose from 54.7% in 2022/23 to 65.4% in 2024/25. That is a rise of +10.7 pts in two years, and +4.9 pts in the last year alone.
The achievement rate is built from two other rates, using DfE's own definitions. The retention rate is learning aims completed divided by leavers. The pass rate is learning aims achieved divided by aims successfully completed. Multiply them and you get the achievement rate.
It is worth being precise about “completed” here, because the loose version of this sentence – “apprentices who reached end-point assessment” – was never quite the statistical definition, and is now actively misleading: under the assessment reforms taking effect across 2026–27, assessment can take place during an apprenticeship rather than only at the end. A completer is an apprenticeship recorded as successfully completing the learning programme.
Over the two years, retention rose +10.5 pts, from 56.2% to 66.7%. The pass rate rose +0.9 pts, from 97.2% to 98.1%. Almost the entire improvement is retention.
The change is not evenly spread. Apprentices aged 24 and over had the lowest achievement rate two years ago and have improved fastest.
| Age at start | Leavers 2024/25 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 | Change over two years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16–18 | 67,450 | 56.5% | 60.7% | 64.6% | +8.1 pts |
| 19–23 | 78,010 | 59.1% | 63.4% | 67.5% | +8.4 pts |
| 24 and over | 155,050 | 51.6% | 58.9% | 64.9% | +13.3 pts |
Interpretation
A pass rate above 97% tells you something important about what these numbers can and cannot diagnose. Once an apprentice completes their learning aims, they almost always achieve. So the national movement over these three years is overwhelmingly a movement in whether apprentices completed at all.
That reframes what a low achievement rate means. It is more likely to be about employment continuity, redundancy, job changes, programme length, or how well an apprentice was matched to the standard, than about the quality of the assessment or a failure of teaching at the final hurdle.
It does not follow that every gap between two providers, or between two sectors, is a retention gap. DfE cautions explicitly that differences in provision mix across sectors change overall averages. A provider teaching mostly Level 7 professional standards to employed adults and one teaching Level 2 to 16-year-olds will differ on achievement rate for reasons that are neither retention nor quality. The national finding is a statement about the national trend, not a lens to apply to any particular comparison.
Why retention improved is not something the release answers. The concentration of improvement among apprentices aged 24 and over – up +13.3 pts against +8.1 pts for 16–18s – is suggestive, and it sits alongside the shift towards higher-level standards taken by employed adults. But those are associations across the same period, not a demonstrated mechanism, and cohort composition changing is itself one of the plausible explanations.
One further caution applies to any provider-level reading of these figures. The National Achievement Rate Tables are published at provider level with small cohorts suppressed: 259,804 cells in the underlying file are suppressed or unavailable. Those suppressions are preserved rather than filled in, so a provider with no published rate has not necessarily performed badly – it may simply have had too few leavers for a rate to be published safely.
Why it matters
“Achievement rates are up” is technically accurate and analytically empty. It gives a provider no idea what to do next, and it gives a policymaker no idea what worked.
“Retention is up +10.5 pts while pass rates barely moved” does both. It says the system got better at keeping apprentices on programme, not at teaching them to pass, and it points a provider trying to improve towards the body of a programme rather than the assessment window. It also means that anyone comparing two providers on achievement rate alone is comparing completion as much as anything else – and completion is shaped by the employers a provider works with, the occupations it serves and the levels it delivers, before any question of quality arises.
Which is why this Explorer shows all three rates, always, and never the achievement rate on its own.