Around 7.2 million workers in England are likely to qualify for a fully-funded course. Only about 1 in 6 takes one, and last year the number training fell. This study uses official earnings and participation data to map who qualifies for free training, where they live, and where the gap between qualifying and enrolling is widest.
Key findings
- About 1 in 3 employees in England (35%) earn under £26,800, the main earnings cut-off for fully-funded training from August 2026. That is roughly 7.2 million workers, before counting people out of work, who usually qualify too.
- About 1.17 million adults took a government-funded education and training course in 2024/25. For every adult who trained, around 6 employees were likely to qualify.
- The number of adults training is falling. Participation dropped 4.8% in 2024/25, the first year of the new Adult Skills Fund, and fell in 8 of England’s 9 regions. The number who qualify barely moved.
- Where you live changes your odds of qualifying. In the North East, 2 in 5 employees earn under the national cut-off. In London it is closer to 1 in 4, and even under London’s own higher threshold (£28,860), fewer than 1 in 3.
- The take-up gap is widest in the South. The South West, East of England and South East have England’s lowest participation in funded adult training, despite plenty of people who qualify.
- The government raised the earnings threshold to £26,800 for 2026/27. Wage growth swallowed the rise. Almost exactly the same share of workers qualifies as last year.
Who qualifies for free training?
England funds a large amount of adult education. The best-known offer is Free Courses for Jobs: a free Level 3 qualification, the level equivalent to A levels. It goes to adults who do not already have one, or whose earnings fall under a threshold.
From August 2026, that earnings threshold is £26,800. Earn less than that and you are likely to qualify for a fully-funded course. People who are unemployed or on certain benefits usually qualify too. Other offers cover courses from essential skills up to Level 3, and the rules vary by area now that skills funding is devolved.
We say “likely to qualify” throughout this study. Eligibility is always confirmed by the course provider, and a few offers have extra conditions. But earnings are the main gate, and earnings are something we can measure.
Finding 1: six qualify for every one who trains
Applying the £26,800 threshold to official earnings data (ONS, 2025), about 35.3% of employees in England earn below it. That is around 7.2 million workers who are likely to qualify for a fully-funded course.
This is a floor, not a ceiling. It counts employees only. Unemployed adults, low-earning self-employed people and returners to work can also qualify, so the true eligible population is larger.
Against that, 1,174,940 adults took a government-funded education and training course in 2024/25 (Department for Education participation data, the latest full year).
For every adult who took a funded course, roughly 6 employees were likely eligible. Put another way: of the people who could train for free, only about 1 in 6 does in a given year, and that is before counting eligible people who are not employees at all.
Most of that gap is not refusal. It is awareness. The rules are confusing, they differ by area, and there is no single place people are told what they qualify for. That is the blind spot.
Finding 2: the north-south eligibility divide
Earnings decide eligibility, and earnings vary a lot by region. The result is a 15-point gap in who qualifies.
| Region | Employees earning under £26,800 | Likely-eligible workers |
|---|---|---|
| North East | 41.2% | ~363,000 |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | 39.6% | ~790,000 |
| East Midlands | 39.5% | ~711,000 |
| North West | 38.7% | ~1,060,000 |
| West Midlands | 38.3% | ~790,000 |
| South West | 38.3% | ~812,000 |
| East of England | 34.0% | ~812,000 |
| South East | 32.3% | ~1,140,000 |
| London* | 26.4% | ~784,000 |
Share of employees earning under £26,800 (ONS ASHE 2025, resident analysis). England average: 35.3%. *London is the one region that sets its own, higher threshold: £28,860, pegged to the London Living Wage. Under London’s own rule, 29.9% of employees qualify, around 888,000 workers.
In the North East, 2 in 5 employees earn under the national cut-off. In London, fewer than 1 in 4. London’s more generous rule brings in around 105,000 more workers than the national test suggests, and its share is still the lowest in England.
The differences are even sharper between local areas:
Highest shares of workers under the threshold: Nottingham (51%), Isle of Wight (50%), Hull (48%), Sandwell (47%), Blackburn with Darwen (46%), Leicester (46%), Cornwall (46%), Blackpool (45%).
Lowest, on the national test: Kensington and Chelsea (14%), Wandsworth (18%), Lambeth (19%), Islington (19%), Westminster (20%). All five are London boroughs, so London’s higher threshold lifts each of them; Kensington and Chelsea is about 19% under the capital’s own rule, still the lowest in England.
In Nottingham, half the city’s workers are likely to qualify for a fully-funded course.
Finding 3: the southern take-up gap
High eligibility does not automatically mean low take-up. To compare fairly, we use the Department for Education’s own participation rates, per 1,000 working-age (19 to 64) residents.
| Region | Employees likely eligible | Funded learners per 1,000 working-age residents |
|---|---|---|
| North East | 41.2% | 46.7 |
| London | 26.4% | 39.0 |
| North West | 38.7% | 38.6 |
| East Midlands | 39.5% | 37.0 |
| West Midlands | 38.3% | 36.1 |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | 39.6% | 32.3 |
| South East | 32.3% | 27.4 |
| South West | 38.3% | 26.4 |
| East of England | 34.0% | 25.9 |
Participation: DfE adult education and training, 2024/25, rate per 1,000 residents aged 19 to 64. England average: 33.8.
Credit where due: the North East has England’s highest eligibility and its highest take-up, and London participates strongly. The pattern mostly holds: where more people qualify, more people train.
The exception is the South. The South West, East of England and South East have the lowest take-up in the country, at 26 to 27 funded learners per 1,000 working-age residents. The South West stands out most: nearly 2 in 5 of its employees are likely to qualify, yet for every South West adult who took a funded course last year, around 9 employees were likely eligible. In London the figure is between 3 and 4.
If the blind spot has a centre, it is not the North. It is the South West.
Finding 4: fewer adults are training
The blind spot is not closing. It widened last year.
In 2024/25, the first year of the new Adult Skills Fund, adult participation in funded education and training fell by 4.8%, from 1,233,930 to 1,174,940. Participation fell in 8 of England’s 9 regions. The South East saw the steepest drop (down 8.7%), followed by Yorkshire and the Humber (down 7.8%) and the South West (down 6.9%). Only the West Midlands trained more adults than the year before (up 3.3%).
Over the same period, the number of workers who qualify barely moved. Roughly 59,000 fewer adults trained, out of more than 7 million who likely could for free.
Finding 5: the threshold rise that changed nothing
For 2026/27 the government raised the earnings threshold from £25,750 to £26,800, a rise of 4.1%. Over the same period, median full-time pay rose by about 4.3% (ONS, 2024 to 2025).
The result: the share of workers who qualify is essentially unchanged, moving by less than a tenth of a percentage point. The same roughly 7.2 million workers qualify as last year. The rise kept pace with wages. It did not widen access.
The postcode lottery
Skills funding is devolved, and some areas set their own bar. London fully funds low-wage learners under £28,860, pegged to the London Living Wage. Buckinghamshire funds a first full Level 3 for anyone earning under £31,427. Greater Manchester applies its own more generous low-wage test. Earn the same wage in two postcodes and your free-course options can differ. We will publish the full 2026/27 area-by-area comparison shortly.
Are you one of the 7 million?
Most people who qualify for free training have never been told. It takes about 2 minutes to find out what you are likely eligible for.
About the data
Eligibility. We applied the 2026/27 national earnings threshold of £26,800, which applies to courses starting from 1 August 2026. Earnings come from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2025: resident analysis, gross annual pay, all employees, England only. The share of employees under the threshold in each area is estimated by interpolation on ASHE’s published percentile distribution. Headcounts multiply that share by the area’s employee jobs. Courses starting before 1 August 2026 are assessed under the 2025/26 threshold of £25,750; the difference to these figures is negligible.
Participation. Department for Education, Further Education and Skills statistics, adult (19+) “education and training” participation, 2024/25 academic year, the latest full year available. DfE revised the education and training definition in 2024/25 alongside the introduction of the Adult Skills Fund; the revised definition is applied consistently across all years quoted here, so year-on-year comparisons are like for like. This strand excludes apprenticeships and tailored learning (formerly community learning), so total funded learning is larger than the participation figure used here. Regional rates are DfE-published participation rates per 100,000 residents aged 19 to 64 (ONS population estimates), shown per 1,000 for readability. The funded-training offers themselves are run by the Department for Work and Pensions, which took over the programme in September 2025.
What the figures are and are not. “Likely eligible” is an estimate based on earnings, the main eligibility gate. It is not a guarantee: providers confirm individual eligibility, and some offers have extra conditions such as prior qualifications or residency. The 7.2 million figure counts employees only and is therefore conservative. Every area is measured against the national £26,800 test so regions can be compared on the same ruler; devolved authorities can set higher thresholds, and where that changes the picture materially (London, £28,860) we give the own-rule figure alongside, computed by the same method. The eligibility and participation figures come from different sources and are compared as orders of magnitude, not as an exact enrolment rate.
Download the data
The datasets behind this study are free to download and reuse: eligibility by area (CSV) and regional participation and take-up (CSV).
If you use these figures, please credit “JobYay analysis of ONS ASHE 2025 and DfE participation data” and link to this page.
Press enquiries: happy to provide figures for your area, quotes or the underlying workings. Contact John Callaghan, founder: [email protected].