Early Learning Care Graduate Outcomes 2022

This chapter includes an overview on the number of graduates in this report by sex, NFQ level, age group and employment sector one year prior to graduation.

An employment sector classification was developed for this release using Pobal, National Childcare Scheme (NCS) and Revenue data to produce three distinct classifications:

• 'ELC Sector' - Graduates who are either employed or self-employed in pre-primary education or child day-care activities (NACE codes P8510 and Q8891), or who work for an employer which is approved by Pobal and/or is on the NCS Service Providers list.
• 'Non-ELC Sector Health and Education' - Graduates who are not in the ELC sector (see above) but are employed or self-employed in either the Education sector (NACE code P) or Human Health & Social Work Activities (NACE code Q).
• 'Other Employment Sectors' - Graduates who work in any other sectors of the economy.

A full description of NACE sectors (General Industrial Classification of Economic Activities within the European Communities) is available here (NACE codes). 

The data in this chapter includes those graduations with missing or invalid identifiers which could not be matched to the public-sector datasets used in this report. However, only graduates with valid identifiers were included in the employment sector analysis here in order for them to be linked to the Revenue dataset. Unmatched records are also excluded from subsequent chapters. To protect against statistical disclosure, graduate numbers are rounded to the nearest 5 throughout this report.

Graduate numbers by Gender

Graduate numbers have fluctuated between 2013 and 2022. The total number of graduates increased from 4,195 in 2013 to a peak of 6,320 in 2017. Since then the number of graduates has declined to 4,605 in 2022. Across all years the majority of graduates from ELC courses are female. Of the 4,605 graduates in 2022, 125 were male representing less than 3% of all graduates. 

Proportion of graduates by NFQ Level

Between 2013 and 2022, there was also an increase in graduations at NFQ Level 6. These findings are related to new qualification requirements in the sector, with a minimum level 5 required for working in pre-school and a minimum level 6 for working as a room leader in the (Early Childhood Care and Education) government program.

After levels 5 and 6, the next most common NFQ level was level 8 (Honours Bachelor's Degree), accounting for 23.2% of all graduates in 2022. Only 8% of all graduates had a level 7 qualification (Ordinary Bachelor's Degree) in the same year.

Table 1.1 provides a breakdown of the numbers of graduates by gender, NFQ level and year of qualification.

Proportion of graduates by Employment Sector and Age Group

Figure 1.3 shows the employment sectors of graduates in the year before they graduated. This data relates only to those graduates who could be linked to administrative data. Each graduate in employment was assigned to one of the three employment sectors: 'ELC sector',  'Non-ELC Health and Education Sector' or 'Other Employment Sectors'. Between 2013 and 2022 the proportion of graduates who were already working in the ELC sector steadily grew, reaching more than 50%. Among those who qualified in 2013, 30.6% had worked in the ELC sector the year before (2012).  In contrast, we see that 57.3% of the 2022 graduates were working in ELC the year before, almost double the proportion of the 2013 cohort.

In terms of the ages of graduates who were previously employed in the ELC sector, the share of the 15-25 years age group saw the highest change by almost doubling, from 15.2% to 34.2% from 2013 to 2022. The age group 56-65 years had the highest percentage of graduates working in the ELC sector prior to graduation, at 60% in 2013 and rising at 75% in 2022.