Latvia: centralised approach to graduate tracking
A national centralised graduate tracking, based on administrative data, was implemented in higher education in 2019. In VET, the implementation is in progress. The education ministry has already acquired initial data (2018 and 2019) on VET graduates from the national statistics office. However, publishing the data (analysis by the ministry) requires changes in the legislation that are expected to be adopted in Q1 2022. The VET tracking data are expected to be published in mid-2022.
Several institutions are involved in graduate tracking. Schools submit raw data to the State education information system that is coordinated by the education ministry. The national statistics office processes them together with data from other national registers, i.e. the tax office information on employees, taxpayers and their income, and the public employment service information on the unemployed and jobseekers.
The graduate tracking data contains:
- socio-biographical and socio-economic information
(name, date of birth (year), gender, personal identification number (only for data processing));
- information on education and training
(VET programme code in the Latvian education qualifications system, title of the programme, professional qualification and EQF/LQF level);
- information on employment or continuation of education and training
(employment status: employed as per qualification or in the relevant sector; generally employed, self-employed or continue studies; unemployed; inactive (economically); number of companies founded by graduates; number of graduates who founded companies; number of graduates owning shares in companies);
- additional information
(number of graduates with residence permit; emigrated graduates; graduates by administrative regions).
The graduate tracking data follows NACE and ISCO classifications and cover higher education programmes at EQF levels 5, 6 and 7 as well as VET programmes at EQF levels 3 and 4. Each graduate’s data will be tracked for 10 years. For example, the 2018 graduates will be monitored annually until 2028. Graduate tracking data on higher education graduates is published on the education ministry’s web and on open data portal where CSV files are also available. VET graduate tracking data will be published there as well as soon as they are available.