How our provider rankings work
The data
League tables on standard pages are built from the Department for Education's published apprenticeship achievement rate tables - the same official dataset behind the government's own provider pages. The current tables use 2024/25 data, the most recent academic year the DfE has published. When the DfE releases a new year (usually each July), our tables update automatically.
The three rates
- Achievement rate - of everyone who left the programme, the share who achieved it. This is the headline measure and what we rank by.
- Pass rate - of those who reached end-point assessment, the share who passed. Usually much higher than the achievement rate because it excludes apprentices who withdrew earlier.
- Retention rate - the share who stayed to the end of their programme.
A provider quoting a higher figure than our headline number is usually quoting their pass rate. Both are real; they measure different things.
Minimum learner numbers
Small numbers make noisy percentages, so rankings only include providers with at least 30 leavers on that standard in the year. Providers with 10–29 leavers are listed beneath the ranked table, flagged as few learners, unranked. The DfE suppresses data for the smallest learner numbers entirely; suppressed providers cannot appear. The number of learners is shown next to every rate.
What we don't do
Ranked tables labelled "by achievement rate" contain no FATP judgement and no commercial input of any kind: no provider can pay to appear, move up, or be excluded. Ties are broken by number of learners (more evidence ranks first). Our separate monthly rankings use a broader editorial score (achievement, satisfaction, scale, specialist depth) and are labelled as such.
Provider-reported results
Official achievement data is published with a significant lag, and the DfE suppresses figures for few learners, which can make newer specialist providers invisible. Providers can submit their current-year results to us with the number of learners, grade breakdown and supporting evidence (their learner-data records, awarding-body results, or figures quoted in their Ofsted report). We check every submission against that evidence before publishing. These figures always appear separately, labelled provider-reported and not yet DfE-validated, and they play no part in any ranking, sort order, or table position. Never a naked percentage: we always show how many apprentices the figure is based on.
Attribution
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Department for Education, apprenticeship national achievement rate tables. Rankings are compiled by FATP and are not endorsed by the Department for Education.