1246.0 - Education Variables, June 2014
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 26/06/2014
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LEVEL OF EDUCATION – MEASUREMENT ISSUES INTRODUCTION TO THE AUSTRALIAN QUALIFICATION FRAMEWORK (AQF) With the introduction of the AQF, qualifications at the Advanced Diploma/Diploma and Certificate Levels were renamed. It is therefore necessary to identify whether these qualifications were attained under the AQF system (or its predecessor the Register of Tertiary Education (RATE)). In ABS collections, it was decided that qualifications attained before 1998 should be treated as pre-AQF qualifications and qualifications attained in 1998 or later should be treated as AQF qualifications. The year 1998 was chosen for the edit because it was thought 1 to 2 years would elapse before the new AQF qualifications would be likely to be seen in responses (e.g. an AQF diploma would take about 2 years to complete so 1998 would be the earliest we would expect to see any graduates reporting such qualifications). With the introduction of the AQF, the qualification of 'Associate Diploma' was renamed 'Diploma', and the qualification of 'Diploma' was renamed 'Advanced Diploma'. Therefore Diplomas issued under the Register of Tertiary Education (RATE) should be coded to 411 Advanced Diploma, and Diplomas issued under the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) should be coded to 421 Diploma. The ABS regards all responses of Diploma obtained prior to 1998 as indicating the 'higher' of the two Diplomas (i.e. AQF Advanced Diploma), and responses of Diploma from 1998 onwards as meaning the AQF Diploma level. The introduction of the AQF also affected the meaning of the term 'Certificate'. Certificates have been categorised as Certificates I, II, III or IV rather than simply as 'Certificates' since the AQF was adopted. There is a considerable difference between Certificates I and II, and Certificates III (the equivalent of the old Trade Certificate) and IV. The ABS uses an edit procedure when coding the response of 'certificate' from ASCED Level of Education code 500 to either 510 Certificate III & IV or 520 Certificate I & II based on the year of the award and the ABSCQ code assigned. Correspondence between pre-AQF Certificate levels and ASCED Certificate levels are available in Appendix 3 of the ASCED publication. ASCED CODER During collection, the level and the field of the highest non-school qualification are captured as text fields. Post collection, these text fields are processed through the ASCED Coder (or Index) which assigns the appropriate ASCED code for the level and the field of the qualification. It should be noted that the field of highest non-school qualification is actually processed through the Coder first, as this is used in some cases to help determine the correct level of the non-school qualification. ASCED FIELD OF EDUCATION Relevant categories from the Field of Education component of the ASCED are used when collecting, aggregating and disseminating data relating to the standard education field variables.
The following examples illustrate the coding scheme:
The most detailed hierarchical level of the classification consists of 356 base (or third-level) units called Detailed Fields. The Detailed Level categories of the classification are aggregated to form the second-level categories of the classification which comprise 71 Narrow Fields of Education. These in turn are aggregated to the 12 Broad Fields of Education as shown above. Data can be presented at Broad Field level, Narrow Field level, or the base Detailed Field (third) hierarchical level of the classification. If necessary, significant Detailed Fields within a Narrow Field can be presented separately while the remaining Detailed Fields within the Narrow Field are aggregated. For example, the third-level category '030503 Vehicle Mechanics' can be separately identified as an output category within the Narrow Field '0305 Automotive Engineering and Technology', with the remaining third-level Detailed Field categories in this Narrow Field aggregated in an 'Other Automotive Engineering and Technology' category. The same principle can be adopted to highlight significant Narrow Fields within a Broad Field. For more information on the ASCED Field of Education classification, a complete list of ASCED codes, and definitions of Field of Education categories see the ASCED publication (cat. no. 1272.0) on the ABS website. Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window.
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