Vocational and Technical Qualifications Landscape




This 'node tree' shows vocational and technical qualifications available in England and regulated by Ofqual.




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For any feedback on these graphs, please contact [email protected].

Return to the Ofqual Analytics home page.

If you need an accessible version of this information to meet specific accessibility requirements, please email [email protected] with details of your request.


This 'node tree' shows vocational and technical qualifications available in England and regulated by Ofqual.

You can click on a 'node' (represented as a coloured circle) to see the qualifications in that category and their associated number of certifications (number of people completing the qualification).

The 'nodes' are organised across the page:

  • Sector Subject Area (SSA) - each SSA represents a broad subject domain - there are fifteen altogether.
  • Sub Sector Subject Area - a slightly more fine-grained subject classification, such that each SSA is divided into 2 or more sub-categories.
  • Awarding Organisation (AO).

The order of the nodes (and the colouring) is according to the number of certifications (deeper colours representing the greater number of certifications), and presented towards the top.

Each time you click on a node, any further node pathways will open out; and a table is presented beneath supplying a list of the data that sits beneath.

You can also filter out some categories of qualifications, using the filter buttons at the top of the page, according to:

  • Level of qualification. The default setting is all qualifications - but it is possible to focus just on one particular level.
  • DfE performance table inclusion - it is possible the focus just on those qualifications that the Department for Education has said the results of which can be included in performance tables for schools and colleges.

This data visualisation shows:

  • Vocational and/or technical qualifications available in England and regulated by Ofqual.
  • Qualifications that are 'current' in the sense that they have certifications in the selected academic year and/or they went on our register after 31 August of the selected academic year. If there have been no certifications, it is not shown in the node tree but it is shown in the accompanying table.

It does not show:

  • Qualifications not regulated by Ofqual. It therefore does not show those qualifications only available in other parts of the UK: Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland.
  • Qualifications that are classed as 'general' or 'other general' e.g. GCSE, A Level, and qualifications which are designed to fit with similar academic courses of study.
  • T Level Technical Qualifications as there is not a certificate for the Technical Qualification itself, rather the Department for Education issues T Level certificates after collecting information from both awarding organisations and providers.

The certification data is for the twelve-month period between October and September in the respective academic year.

We also publish the certifications data on a quarterly basis as accredited official statistics.

Many assessments were cancelled or delayed in summer 2020 due to the measures put in place in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. These restrictions will have affected the number of certificates in the academic year.

This shows the detail of the most recent node that you have clicked on. It can show how many certifications there have been in the 12-month period for each particular named qualification.

Yes - you can download the data from the table by clicking on the `Download this table` button which is located underneath the table.

In this app, the number of certificates are rounded to the nearest 5 and values less than 5 are replaced with 5. Zero represents no certificates. The total number of certificates are calculated from summing the rounded values. There might be slight differences with published values where totals have been calculated using the original unrounded values.


For any feedback on these graphs, please contact [email protected].

Return to the Ofqual Analytics home page.

If you need an accessible version of this information to meet specific accessibility requirements, please email [email protected] with details of your request.