Early Learning Care Graduate Outcomes 2022

What do Early Learning Care Graduates do?

This chapter describes the employment and education destinations of graduates, and how these destinations vary across the different graduation years and levels of qualification. Two different styles of longitudinal study are presented. Graduate outcomes are described at one, two, and three years after graduation in a longitudinal panel study. Graduate outcomes are also analysed at one year after graduation for each of the separate graduation years in a longitudinal cohort study.

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

• 'Substantial Employment only': graduates who meet minimum criteria for employment and have no record of enrolment in further or higher education within the same year.
• 'Substantial Employment and Education': graduates who meet the criteria for substantial employment and were enrolled in further or higher education at some point within the same calendar year.
• 'Education only': graduates who are enrolled in further or higher education but are not in substantial employment.
• 'Neither Employment nor Education': graduates who are not in further or higher education nor in substantial employment but who do appear in some administrative data in the year. These graduates may have some record of (non-substantial) employment or may have claimed some benefit over the year.
• 'Not Captured': all other graduates. This group could not be found in any administrative dataset for the year and it is assumed that most emigrated, but there is no definitive indicator of emigration in the administrative data sources.

Outcomes for 2020 graduates after one, two and three years are shown in Figures 2.2 and 2.3. This graduation year is examined in some detail throughout this report as it is the most recent graduation year for which complete outcomes data is available. Other combinations of graduation year and years since graduation are available within the CSO PxStat tables that accompany this publication.

Nine in every ten 2022 graduates find substantial employment in first year after graduation

The proportion of graduates who were in substantial employment in the first year after graduation rose between 2013 and 2022 from 65.4% to 89.1%. In 2022, 59.9% of all graduates were in substantial employment while 29.2% were in substantial employment and education.

In 2013, 49% of graduates returned to education in the first year after graduating but this dropped to 32.8% by 2022.

The proportion of graduates who were neither in employment nor education more than halved between 2013 and 2022, decreasing from 14.7% to 5.4%. The proportion of graduates who were not captured also fell over this time period by about one percent point, from 2.9% to 2.0%.

Please see Table 2.1 for a breakdown of the number of graduates in substantial employment one year after graduation by employment sector and year of graduation.

Four in ten graduates from 2020 were re-enrolled in Education one year after graduation

Four in ten (40.4%) graduates from 2020 were re-enrolled in education in the first year after graduation, dropping to 24% three years after graduation. More than four in five (86.5%) graduates were substantially employed in the year after graduation and this remained quite stable at 85.8% three years after graduation. In the first year after graduation, just 1.1% of graduates were not captured and this proportion rose to 3.4% three years after graduation. The proportion of graduates who were neither in employment nor education grew slightly from 6.2% in the first year after graduation to 8.0% after three years.

Around nine in ten graduates at NFQ Levels 6, 7 and 8 in substantial employment one year after graduation

About nine in ten graduates who completed courses in 2020 at NFQ Level 6 (90%), NFQ Level 7 (95.2%) and NFQ Level 8 (89.3%) were in substantial employment the following year. These proportions fell slightly three years after graduating for Level 6 (88.2%), Level 7 (91.7%) and Level 8 (85.6%). 

When compared to higher NFQ levels, NFQ Level 5 has a lower proportion of graduates in substantial employment in the year after graduation, at 79%. This proportion increases to 81.8% three years after graduation.

Over six in ten (63.1%) of NFQ Level 7 graduates were re-enrolled in education one year after graduation. This percentage dropped significantly, to 17.9%, three years after graduation.

Most graduates who re-enrol proceed to higher NFQ

This section examines those graduates who re-enrolled in education in the first year after graduation. Note that this analysis was only done for those graduates whose re-enrolment NFQ level was available.

Between 2013 and 2022, the proportion of those re-enrolling in a course at a higher NFQ level ranged between 68.3% and 77.4%. The percentage of those who re-enrolled at the same NFQ level or a lower NFQ level also fluctuated between 22.6% and 31.7%. For 2022 graduates, 9.4% of graduates re-enrolled at a lower NFQ level, 13.2% at the same NFQ level and 77.4% at a higher NFQ level. 

More than nine in ten NFQ Level 7graduates who re-enrolled opted for Level 8 or above

This section examines those graduates from 2022 who re-enrolled in education in the first year after graduation. Over 60% of NFQ Level 7 graduates (Figure 2.3) had re-enrolled in education within one year, and almost 95% of these were pursuing a course at NFQ Level 8 or above. The proportion that opted for a course at a lower NFQ level was 5%. Similarly, 93.3% of NFQ Level 5 graduates who were back in education had enrolled at a higher NFQ level. Among NFQ Level 8 graduates, 36.8% of those re-enrolled were taking courses at NFQ Levels 9 or 10, with 18.4% taking another NFQ Level 8 course, and 44.7% choosing a lower NFQ level course instead.