- Data indicates that Northern Ireland has a significantly higher proportion of young people who leave school early than Ireland.
- Research from ESRI indicates that academic selection is likely to be a contributory factor to this difference.
- However, FactCheckNI could find no solid data to compare the rates of early school leaving across the four UK nations.
- Looking at the proportion of young people who are not in education, employment and training (NEET), it appears that NI actually has a lower rate of people aged 16-24 who are not in some form of education or work.
- However, being NEET is NOT the same thing as being an early school leaver (or necessarily leaving school with low attainment), while the rules around when young people can leave school vary across England, Scotland, Wales and NI, meaning the context is different.
- UK data on NEETs is currently unreliable and doesn’t allow clean comparisons to be made across the four UK nations.
In an article published in the Irish Times on 2 May, columnist John FitzGerald wrote:
“Unlike the rest of the United Kingdom, which abandoned such selection decades ago, today in the North 40 per cent of children are selected at age 11 to go to grammar school, with the remaining 60 per cent facing poorer prospects and life chances. This results in a much higher level of early school leaving than elsewhere in the UK or the Republic, with serious long-term social and economic consequences.”
This fact check focuses on four points:
- The UK abandoned academic selection decades ago.
This aspect is supported by evidence. Grammar school numbers in England began shrinking in the 1960s. Only 163 remain, down from a peak of 1,298 in 1964.
- Around 40% of Northern Ireland children attend a grammar school.
There is evidence to support this claim. Northern Ireland’s 2023 Independent Review of Education found that 42.6% of all post-primary pupils were attending grammar schools (based on the academic year 2022-23) and that this had risen slightly from 38.9% in 1991-92.
- NI has a much higher level of early school leavers than Great Britain or Ireland.
Part of this aspect is supported by evidence. Research published by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in 2022 not only found that NI has a much higher percentage of early school leavers than Ireland, but also that the local system of academic selection was a significant factor in this difference. So, in terms of comparisons with Ireland, this is accurate.
However, the same cannot be said when comparing Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK. No agreed definition or comparable data exists about early school leavers across Great Britain and NI. The best proxy FactCheckNI could find is data on young people aged 16-24 who are not in education, employment or training (NEET), which is statistically hazardous to use for many reasons. Furthermore, current estimates suggest that the proportion of young people who are NEET in NI is actually lower than the UK average. Overall, FactCheckNI could not find evidence strong enough to either support or contradict this part of the claim.
- The system of academic selection contributes to this large number of early leavers.
The ESRI research from 2022 not only found that NI has a much higher percentage of early school leavers than Ireland, but also that the local system of academic selection was likely to be a significant factor in this difference. Therefore, evidence exists to support this part of the claim.
For more information, read on.
- Source
FactCheckNI contacted John FitzGerald, the author of this column, via the Irish Times. At the time of publishing this article, we had not received a reply.
- Academic selection
Did the UK abandon academic selection decades ago?
Historically, grammar schools were developed in the UK as a form of education that could facilitate social mobility regardless of socio-economic background. However, in the 1960s there were concerns that widespread selection was having a negative effect on public education.
Various policy changes in the 1960s and 1970s led to a significant decrease in the total number of grammar schools in England and the total number of pupils who attended such schools.
Figure 1 – source: House of Commons Library
There are currently just 163 grammar schools remaining in England, down from a peak of 1,298 in 1964. There is currently no statutory system for academic selection in either Scotland or Wales.
Based on all this, it is fair to say that – with some exceptions – academic selection and a widespread grammar school system has not existed in the rest of the UK for decades.
- Northern Ireland
Do 40% of local children attend a grammar school?
According to the Independent Review of Education, published in 2023:
- 38.9% of children in post-primary schools were in grammar schools in the year 1991-92.
- By 2022-23, this had risen to 42.6%.
- This is forecast to rise to 46.6% by 2031.
Based on this, the claim that 40% of local children attend grammar schools is accurate.
- School leavers
Research published in 2022 by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found that rates of early school leaving in NI have been much higher than in Ireland.
It should be noted that the report examines three separate definitions of early school leavers. Depending on the definition used, early leaving rates here have been measured as over twice as high as across the border. Those three definitions are:
- The PIAAC (Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies)/OECD definition of persons aged 16 to 24 not in education qualified to lower secondary level or below
- The EU definition of persons aged 16 to 24 not in employment, education or training (NEET) educated to lower secondary level or below
- Persons aged 20 to 24 who are NEET and educated to lower secondary level or below
By each of those definitions, using comparative data from 2014, the report found the number of early leavers in NI to be significantly higher than in Ireland.
Figure 2 – source: ESRI
The research also found that NI’s system of academic selection is likely to be a significant contributory factor into why more local children and young people leave school early when compared with their counterparts on the rest of the island.
The ESRI report stated:
“With respect to Northern Ireland, we conclude that the continuation of the transfer examination system, which segregates children into comprehensive and grammar schools at the age of 11, is likely to remain a significant contributory factor to the much higher levels of educational inequality observed there.”
Based on all this, the claims that Northern Ireland has a significantly higher rate of early school leavers than Ireland and that NI’s system of selection at age 11 plays a role in this difference are both supported by evidence.
But what about elsewhere in the UK?
- UK comparisons
There is no standard definition of early school leaver used across the UK. It is also the case that there is no standardised definition between NI and Ireland, instead the ESRI analysis relied on generated data that accorded with three separate definitions of early leaver.
Within the UK, that is even more tricky (although if anyone can cast more light on this issue please get in touch).
First of all, there are no standardised rules about when young people are allowed to leave school and what they should do afterwards, and for how long. Instead, these rules are different for each of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Beyond that, the most relevant statistics that we could find to make comparisons between the four nations were data on young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). However, this presents challenges. According to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, data for NEET among young people across the UK differs:
“Data for NEET are not comparable across the four UK nations. Definitions of NEET differ across the UK, as does school-leaving age. In England, the September Guarantee policy was implemented in 2007, guaranteeing that all school leavers at 16 years of age must be offered further education or training. In 2013, this was strengthened to mandate participation in education, training or employment until 18 years of age by 2017. The age of school leaving remains 16 years in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.”
And the misgivings with this data don’t stop there.
- More issues
UK statistics on NEETs are collected through the Labour Force Survey. This data has been in the spotlight for its potential unreliability in recent times (see news stories and analysis here, here and here).
The ONS itself has said its current LFS data should be treated with more caution than is normal. In its latest data report it states:
“Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates have been affected by increased volatility, resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes, meaning that estimates of change should be treated with additional caution … The LFS continues to be the sole source of data for unemployment, economic inactivity, and self-employment, and provides a range of breakdowns that are only possible from LFS data … The ongoing challenges with response rates and levels mean that LFS-based labour market statistics will be badged as official statistics in development until further review.”
This casts immediate doubt on the quality of NEET statistics overall. Then there is the definition of NEET. It’s clear from the original claim, and the column in which it was made, that the journalist is talking about young people who have left school early and perhaps have few qualifications or none.
However, the usual definition of NEET – someone aged 16-24 who is not in education, employment or training – can include young people who are highly educated. Someone who got good grades at A Levels, has a degree, and is simply looking for work can be counted as NEET, and that’s not really what this claim is about – we are focusing on early school leavers after all. (Note that the three definitions of early school leaver used by ESRI in its north-south comparison all stipulate that the individuals in question should have low educational attainment.)
When all this is considered alongside the fact that the rules around school leaving age and mandatory training are different in the four UK nations, it has to be said that these data are not comparing like with like or, more to the point, NI’s system of academic selection is far from the only difference between the different parts of the UK and, insofar as it may be a contributing factor to early school leaving, it is not the only such factor.
- NEET data
The latest quarterly figures on the number of local young people deemed to be NEET were published by NISRA and the Department for the Economy this week. Some headline statistics include:
- There were an estimated 19,000 young people aged 16 to 24 years in Northern Ireland who were not in education, employment or training (NEET) in January to March 2025. This was equivalent to 9.4% of all those aged 16 to 24 years in NI, a decrease of 1.7 percentage points from the previous quarter (11.1% in October to December 2024).
- The NEET rate among males aged 16 to 24 was 9.2% and among females was 9.6% in January to March 2025.
- The number who were NEET decreased by 3,000 from the previous quarter and increased by 5,000 over the year, this change was not statistically significant.
In comparison, figures published by the Office for National Statistics in February indicate that:
- An estimated 13.4% of all people aged 16 to 24 years in the UK were not in education, employment or training (NEET) in October to December 2024. This is up 1.3 percentage points, compared with October to December 2023, and up 0.3 percentage points on the previous quarter.
- An estimated 14.4% of young men (up 1.2 percentage points on the year) and 12.3% of young women (up 1.3 percentage points on the year) were NEET. There were 987,000 young people who were NEET in total, an increase of 110,000 on the year.
- The percentage of those aged 18 to 24 years who were NEET was 15.8%, which was up 1.3 percentage points on the year and up 0.3 percentage points on the quarter.
Based on these figures, it appears that not only does NI not have a significantly higher rate of young people who are NEET than other parts of the UK, in fact local NEET rates are lower than the UK average.
However, as explained above, this comes with significant caveats.
- Conclusion
Overall, it is hard to draw any concrete conclusions from the data that is publicly available, however it is fair to say that NI has a lower percentage of young people who are NEET than elsewhere in the UK and, in so far as NEET data measures the rate of early school leavers (which is questionable, for the many reasons listed above), this certainly does not provide any evidence that local rates of early leaving are higher than elsewhere in the UK.
Anyone who can point us to more robust data comparing rates of early school leavers between NI and the rest of the UK, please get in touch.
