Understanding
student demand
How career and subject interest is shifting across Further Education, and what it means for your institution.
Introduction & context
This report analyses student career and subject engagement across Further Education in the UK, drawing on data generated through Pathways One, an interactive career exploration tool embedded directly on course and subject pages at colleges, schools and training providers.
When a student loads the tool on a subject page, two interactions are recorded: the subject page from which the tool was launched, and any occupations the student subsequently views. This report analyses both across the 2024 and 2025 calendar years, covering eleven UK regions.
A growing picture of student demand
The scale of Pathways One has grown substantially year-on-year. The number of college web pages embedding the tool rose from 29,000 to over 42,000, a 44% increase in coverage. Occupation views grew by 29.7% to 20.7 million, and subject page interactions grew even faster, up 47.5% to 16.7 million. Northern Ireland appears in the dataset for the first time in 2025, extending regional coverage to eleven UK regions.
This expansion matters beyond the headline numbers. A broader institutional footprint means the data reflects a more complete and representative picture of student career curiosity across the FE sector than in any previous year. Each year that Pathways One grows, the dataset becomes a more reliable signal of where student interest is genuinely heading, and a more useful foundation for institutional planning.
All sector and subject shares are expressed as a percentage of total views within each year. Year-on-year changes are reported in percentage points (pp). This normalised approach allows meaningful comparison of relative student interest independent of overall platform growth. Use the region selectors within each chart to filter to your area.
How student interest is shifting
Over 20.7 million occupation views were recorded nationally in 2025, a 29.7% increase year-on-year. But the more important story is the direction.
Analysing relative share of views, rather than raw counts, reveals a meaningful realignment in student career curiosity. Student demand for vocational and trade-based pathways is accelerating, while some traditionally dominant sectors are losing relative ground.
The sectors gaining ground
Childcare, Education & Training recorded the largest increase of any sector, rising from 9.5% to 11.1% of all occupation views (+1.57pp). Building Trades, Art & Design and Engineering all strengthened their positions. Subject page data tells the same story: Electrical, Beauty Therapy, Vehicle Maintenance and Hairdressing each grew their share of student browsing in 2025.
The sectors losing ground
Nursing, Therapy & Care experienced the most significant shift. The most-viewed sector in 2024 at 11.5% of all occupation views, its relative share fell to 9.1% in 2025, a decline of 2.4 percentage points. Advertising, Marketing & Business (-1.2pp) and Media & Entertainment (-0.6pp) also declined. Computing & IT, despite remaining popular at occupation level, slipped from fifth to sixth place at sector level as student interest broadened.
Most-viewed individual occupations
At occupation level, Programmers & Software Development Professionals retains the top position with over one million views, though its normalised share fell by 0.19pp, suggesting broader student interest is widening across other careers. Graphic & Multimedia Designers holds second.
Below that, the picture shifts considerably, Primary and Secondary Education Teaching Professionals both climbed sharply, Electricians entered the top five, while Nursing Professionals fell from 3rd to 8th and Marketing dropped from 4th to 10th.
Risers and fallers
The national shift in student interest is not uniform across sectors. Understanding which sectors are moving, and how quickly, has direct relevance for curriculum planning, careers guidance and course marketing.
The standout story: Nursing, Therapy & Care
Despite remaining the third most-viewed sector, Nursing, Therapy & Care recorded the largest single decline of any sector, a fall that is consistent across every comparable region. Wales (-5.6pp) and North West (-4.2pp) recorded the steepest falls, but no comparable region was an exception. The breadth of this pattern across different geographies gives it considerable weight.
Advertising, Marketing & Business declined by 1.2 percentage points nationally, the second largest fall. Computing & IT presents a more nuanced picture: Programmers & Software Development Professionals remains the single most-viewed occupation nationally, yet at sector level Computing & IT slipped from fifth to sixth as student interest broadened.
Occupations driving sector demand
Sector-level data tells part of the story, but it is equally valuable to look within each sector at the specific occupations attracting most student attention. The five sectors with the greatest student interest in 2025 each have a distinct internal profile, and understanding which roles are drawing curiosity can help inform how courses and career pathways are positioned to prospective students.
Education: the rising force
Of all the shifts recorded in 2025, the rise of Childcare, Education & Training is the most significant. For the first time, it is the most-viewed career sector nationally, overtaking Nursing, Therapy & Care, which had held the top position throughout 2024.
Its share of all occupation views grew from 9.5% to 11.1%, a gain of 1.57 percentage points, the largest increase of any sector in either direction. In absolute terms, total views grew from 1.51 million to 2.29 million, a rise of 51%.
The growth is broad-based within the sector. Primary education teaching professionals entered the national top three for the first time, while Early education, Special Needs and Nursery education all recorded strong absolute growth. The momentum is not concentrated in one role, it runs across the full breadth of education and childcare careers.
Education leads demand across qualification routes
Education is the most-viewed subject across three distinct qualification routes in 2025, a cross-route consistency that is a strong signal of genuine demand.
The subjects students are engaging with most
Subject page data reveals the context in which student career curiosity emerges, the courses students are actively considering when they begin exploring career options.
In 2025, subject pages generated over 16.7 million student interactions nationally, a 47.5% increase on 2024. Electrical and Beauty Therapy sit at the top of the national rankings, each accounting for approximately 3% of all subject page views. The consistency between subject page gainers and occupation view gainers, particularly across trades and education, strengthens the case that these represent genuine shifts in student interest.
Demand by qualification route
Breaking subject page demand down by qualification type reveals distinct patterns in what students are curious about, and how that curiosity differs depending on the route they are considering.
A Level students gravitate towards academic and professional pathways, Psychology, Computing and Business dominate. BTEC browsers show stronger vocational intent, with IT, Business and Health & Social Care leading. Apprenticeship demand is anchored by Teaching Assistant, Carpentry and Electrical. T Levels are led by Education & Childcare, Health and Management. The connection between the education story explored earlier in this report and qualification route data is direct, Education tops the rankings across Apprenticeships, T Levels and Access to HE simultaneously, a cross-route signal that is difficult to ignore.
Use the tabs and region selector below to explore how demand varies by route and by area.
Where you are matters
National trends provide a useful benchmark, but student demand is not uniform across the UK. Regional analysis reveals both the consistency of certain shifts, reinforcing confidence in the national picture, and meaningful local variation that institutions should understand in their own context.
The decline in Nursing, Therapy & Care is the most consistent finding across all comparable regions, every region recorded a fall, ranging from -0.18pp in Yorkshire & Humber to -5.60pp in Wales. The universality of this trend across geographies of different sizes and profiles adds considerable weight to the national finding.
Beyond that shared pattern, the regional picture diverges considerably. The South East recorded notably strong growth in occupation views in 2025, consistent with an expansion in institutional coverage in the region. Its subject page data reflects a broad vocational spread, with Beauty Therapy, Art & Design, Animal Management and Vehicle Maintenance all featuring prominently. The North East recorded a 4.31pp surge in Engineering interest, the largest single-sector regional gain of any region. Yorkshire & Humber and the North East remain distinctly anchored by land-based subjects, Animal Management, Equine, Agriculture and Floristry feature consistently in their top rankings, reflecting a demand profile that differs markedly from the national average. East Midlands recorded exceptional growth of +711% in occupation views, reflecting a significant expansion in institutional coverage rather than organic demand shift.
Select your region below to compare your local sector data against the national picture.
Academic ambitions surge on results day
GCSE results day, 21 August 2025, generated over 340,000 occupation views through Pathways One. That is six times the platform's average daily traffic, making it one of the highest-intent moments in the student calendar.
The profile of that curiosity is strikingly different from the rest of the year. On results day, students gravitate strongly towards academic and professional career pathways, Computing, Science, Law and Finance all over-index significantly compared to their annual share of views. Vocational and trade-based interests, by contrast, run below their usual levels. Students arriving with their GCSE grades in hand are exploring where those results can take them.
A different kind of student curiosity
Programmers & Software Development Professionals attracted 25,042 views on results day alone, nearly double their nearest rival. Biochemists & Biomedical Scientists, Legal Professionals and Medical Practitioners all feature prominently, reflecting students with strong science and humanities grades considering where those results could lead.
For institutions, results day is one of the few moments in the year when student intent and immediacy align. Students are on course pages with their grades in hand, making decisions in real time. The data suggests that those pages should be ready, with career destinations, progression routes and entry requirements clearly signposted for the academic pathways students are actively exploring on that day.
What this means for your institution
The data reflects the genuine career curiosity of students, captured at the moment they are actively browsing course options.
Two years of data reveals direction, not just position
The trends identified in this report are directional signals, not definitive forecasts. But the consistency of key movements across both datasets and multiple regions gives institutions a more reliable basis for planning than intuition or anecdotal observation alone.
Methodology & notes
Data source
The data underpinning this report is drawn from Pathways One, an interactive career exploration tool embedded directly on course and subject pages at colleges, schools and training providers across the UK. In 2025, 152 institutions were actively embedding the tool, up from 116 in 2024.
When a student loads the tool on a subject page, two interactions are recorded: the subject page from which the tool was launched, and any occupations the student subsequently views. This report analyses both interaction types across the 2024 and 2025 calendar years.
Scale and coverage
The national dataset covers 407 occupations and 1,392 unique subject pages in 2024, rising to 414 occupations and 1,545 subject pages in 2025. Regional data is available for ten regions in 2024 and eleven in 2025, with Northern Ireland appearing in the dataset for the first time.
Normalisation
Raw view counts are influenced by the number of institutions using the tool and the volume of student traffic those institutions receive. To account for this, sector and subject shares are expressed as a percentage of total views within each year, and year-on-year changes are reported in percentage points.
Interpreting the data
Occupation and subject view data reflects demonstrated student curiosity, the careers and subjects students actively engaged with while browsing. It does not capture enrolment decisions, application behaviour or outcomes, and should not be treated as a direct proxy for any of these.
Regional caveats
The East Midlands recorded exceptional growth (+711% occupation views, +910% subject views) between 2024 and 2025, consistent with a significant expansion in institutional coverage rather than organic demand shift. Northern Ireland data is presented for 2025 only; year-on-year comparisons are not available.