Educational attainment, early leaving from education and training, transition from school to work

version 18/01/2019

Complementary methodological information

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Section 1 – Educational attainment

EU data on educational attainment level are presented in the following tables on Eurostat's online database:

• main indicators: edat_lfse_03, edat_lfse_04 and edat_lfse_12
• detailed tables: edat_lfs_9901 to edat_lfs_9918

1.1 Calculation of the LFS indicators

Indicators on educational attainment level are calculated as an annual average of quarterly EU Labour Force Survey data (LFS). See more information on this source in the following statistics explained articles:

- the EU Labour Force Survey – methodology (in particular, user guide for the coding)

- the EU Labour Force Survey – main features and legal basis

- the EU Labour Force Survey – data and publication (in particular, publication guidelines)

The indicator is derived from answers to the LFS variable “level of educational attainment” (HATLEVEL).

In the online database, data on educational attainment are presented for three aggregates (according to ISCED97 up to 2013 and according to ISCED2011 from 2014 onwards):

	ISCED97	ISCED2011
Low education	Pre-primary, primary and lower secondary education (levels 0-2)	Less than primary, primary and lower secondary (levels 0-2)
Medium education	Upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education (levels 3 and 4)	Upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary (levels 3 and 4)
High education	First and second stage of tertiary education (levels 5 and 6)	Short-cycle tertiary, bachelor or equivalent, master or equivalent and doctoral or equivalent (levels 5-8)

These aggregates are based on the derived variable HATLEV1D. The correspondence between HATLEVEL and HATLEV1D according to the ISCED97 (up to 2013) and ISCED2011 (from 2014 onwards) is as follows:

	ISCED97	ISCED2011
Low education (HATLEV1D = ‘L’)	HATLEVEL = 00 to 22	HATLEVEL = 000 to 200
Medium education (HATLEV1D = ‘M’)	HATLEVEL = 30 to 43	HATLEVEL = 300 to 400
High education (HATLEV1D = ‘H’)	HATLEVEL = 51 to 60	HATLEVEL = 500 to 800

The numerator (POP_TGET) is defined as follows: HATLEV1D in ("L" or "M" or "H").

The denominator is the population of a given age group (POP) minus no answers (POP_BLK).

The rate is calculated as follows: RATE = 100 * [POP_TGET / (POP - POP_BLK)]

As regards the population of "no answers", POP_BLK considers the sub-population who did not indicate their educational attainment level.

Therefore POP_BLK corresponds to HATLEV1D = " ".

1.2 Comparability across countries and time series

Explanations for the main breaks in series (flags) are listed in a separate document.

Averages are calculated on the available quarterly LFS data except for the following results due to outliers or missing information on education in certain quarters:

- PL and IT 2000: average Q2-Q4

- UK 2003: average Q3-Q4

Country-specific remarks:

- Revision of the Maltese data (11/04/2013)

1.3 Implementation of ISCED 2011 from 2014 onwards

ISCED 2011 is implemented in EU surveys from 2014. The following supporting methodological material is available:

- ISCED 2011 Operational Manual

- guidelines on the measurement of educational attainment in household surveys

- national ISCED mappings (programmes/qualifications allocated to ISCED1997 and ISCED2011)