Early Learning Care Graduate Outcomes 2022

Early Learning Care Graduate Cohorts

This release uses the HEA’s Student Records System and the QQI awards data to identify annual graduations. These contain details on the courses studied and NFQ level, as well as information about the learners themselves. ELC graduates were identified using course names and codes and in consultation with the Department of Children, Disability and Equality who are responsible for maintaining the approved list of Early Years qualifications recognised for the purposes of meeting the requirements of the Child Care Act 1991.

ELC courses at NFQ Levels between 5 and 9 are recognised by the Department of Children, Disability and Equality and graduates from them can work in the ELC Sector. Note that this analysis is confined to NFQ Levels 5 to 8, covering the vast majority of completed ELC courses. 

The full list of courses included in this release are detailed below in Table 6.1: 

Destination Outcome Categories

There are five classifications that describe graduate activities within each calendar year. 

• Substantial Employment only. This refers to qualified apprentices who meet minimum criteria for substantial employment or self-employment and are not enrolled in higher education within the same calendar year.

• Substantial Employment and Education. This refers to qualified apprentices that meet the criteria for substantial employment or self-employment and are also enrolled in higher education at some point within the same year. 

• Education only. This refers to qualified apprentices that are enrolled in higher education but are not in substantial employment.

• Neither Employment nor Education. This refers to qualified apprentices who do not meet the criteria above but have some activity in administrative records for that year. These qualified apprentices may have some record of (non-substantial) employment or claimed some benefit in that year.

• The remaining individuals are categorised as Not Captured. This means that they have no activity in the administrative data sources for that year. Most of this group are assumed to have emigrated, but there is no definitive indicator of emigration available in the administrative data.

The period since qualification for which outcomes are presented ranges between one and 10 years.

Job Movers

Job Movers as analysed in this section refers to those who were in substantial employment one year after graduation and follows their employment record into the following year, or two years after graduation. While this analysis shows those moving in and out of substantial employment, it also provides additional insights into those continuing in employment but moving jobs both within the same sector or between different sectors. Note that this analysis was restricted to those graduates with no substantial self-employment in either year.

Earnings and Main Employment

Employment data from Revenue includes detailed information on individuals and their employers but does not include hourly wage rates or number of hours worked. Where individuals have multiple employers during the year the Main Employer for each individual is the one which contributes the single largest pay to that individual over the course of the year. The Weekly Earnings for each individual are found using data from the main employer only and is calculated as the gross pay divided by the number of weeks of insurable work. Revenue's PAYE Modernisation System (PMOD) was introduced on 01 January 2019 as the new way of gathering employment data, replacing the P35 annual return system.

For the analysis involving the employment prior to and after graduation, only records with valid information on the PMOD dataset were included. Missing or invalid information on PMOD dataset was therefore, excluded.

Methodology Note

In line with CSO data protocols, all identifiable information from each of the data sources is removed, such as name, date of birth and addresses. The PPSN is replaced with a 'protected identifier key' (PIK) and it is this PIK which is used to link person-based data. The resulting data is then said to be 'pseudonymised' and this is what is used for all analysis.

All ELC graduates (including graduates with missing/invalid PPSNs) are included in the "Overview of Early Learning Care Graduates" chapter.

For the analysis involving outcomes, ELC graduates with missing or invalid PPSNs are excluded as they cannot be linked to other administrative data. 

For the purpose of statistical disclosure controls (SDC), values have been rounded to the nearest five and thus, the sum of individual components may not add up to the totals shown. Similarly, values lower than five have been suppressed and median weekly earnings were calculated by taking an average (mean) of the middle five values in each cohort.

For further details on the methodology used, please refer to the Educational Longitudinal Database page.