Qualification levels (NVQ's) and the unqualified - The Herefordshire Partnership

Qualification levels (NVQ's) and the unqualified

Different types of qualifications are grouped into levels of NVQ (National Vocational Qualification). There are four levels of qualifications, as shown in table 1.  Data for qualifications comes from the Annual Population Survey (APS), which also includes data for those with no qualifications and other qualifications¹.

Herefordshire in general has higher levels of qualifications compared to the West Midlands, however the data for 2007 suggests that none of these differences are significant (Table 1). In 2005 and 2006, some of these differences were significant.


Table 1. Proportion of the working age population by qualification level for Herefordshire, the West Midlands region and England, 2007

Source - Annual Population Survey (ONS Crown copyright) Note: 95% confidence intervals are shown in brackets.

In Herefordshire 65% of the working age population were qualified to at least Level 2 in 2007, 28% to level 4 or 5 and 14% had no qualifications.  Herefordshire rates of qualification were similar to those of the West Midlands and England for all levels of qualification.

1. The APS has superceded the English Local Labour Force Survey and so is only available from 2005 and 2006. For more info see Appendix (reference section 11).