PART 2 CENSUS TOPICS
14. EDUCATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Introduction
This chapter briefly reviews the practices regarding the collection of educational characteristics in the last census round, based on the responses from 50 countries to the UNECE survey27.
Educational attainment (core topic)
As noted at paragraph 331 of the CESR the core topic of ‘educational attainment’ refers essentially to “…. the highest level successfully completed in the educational system of the country where the education was received.”
The CESR also recommended that all education which is relevant to the completion of a level should be taken into account even if this was provided outside of a formal school or university.
Furthermore it was recommended that such information should be collected for all persons aged 10 years or over, but that in order to permit international comparisons, outputs should at least distinguish persons aged less than 15 years from those aged 15 years or over.
The use of the latest available version of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED-9728) was recommended for the classification of highest level of attainment.
Compliance with CES recommendation on educational attainment was the most consistent of all topics across all countries in the UNECE (apart from demographic variable of ’sex’ – See Chapter 11). All countries with the exception of the United Kingdom collected information on the topic. The UK, instead, included in its census a question on ’highest level of educational qualification obtained’
and this provides sufficient data for outputs to be modelled, using an algorithm, to produce an approximation of the standard International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED-97) as recommended:
(a) Level 1 Primary (first stage of basic education)
(b) Level 2 Lower secondary (second stage of basic education) (c) Level 3 Upper secondary education
(d) Level 4 Post-secondary, non-tertiary education (e) Level 5 First stage of tertiary education (f) Level 6 Second stage of tertiary education
This represented a clear improvement from the situation in the 2000 round, in which only 35 out of 42 countries included the topic in their census - though of those that did not, 6 had collected information on educational qualifications from which attainment could at least be approximated.
The level of compliance with the CESR definition in 2010 was almost as good. With the exception of the UK (for the reason noted) and Armenia and Tajikistan (who did not indicate their compliance in their response to the survey), only Finland reported that it did not fully adopt the CESR definition of the topic.
27 The material in this chapter has been taken largely from a report prepared by the UNECE Task Force on Educational Characteristics led by Jari Nieminen (Statistics Finland) and discussed at the Joint UNECE-Eurostat Work Session on Population and Housing Censuses, held in Geneva from 30 September to 3 October 2013 (http://www.unece.org/stats/documents/2013.10.census1.html)
28 International Standard Classification of Education ISCED 1997, UNESCO (http://www.unesco.org/education/information/nfsunesco/doc/isced_1997.htm)
139 But, despite this, and along with the UK, Finland nevertheless reported that it was able to provide data in accordance with the ISCED-97 classification. However, it should be noted that Finland reported that educational attainment and degrees undertaken abroad are not fully registered and thus there was likely to be significant under-coverage of educational data of the foreign population. No other register-based country reported significant definitional difficulties with this topic. Only Tajikistan (who did not respond) and Kazakhstan reported that they could not provide data according to the ISCED classification.
Although the CES Recommendations suggested that data on educational attainment should be collected for all persons aged 10 or over, only 23 of the responding countries (48 per cent) did so. As noted above, to allow international comparisons, CES recommended that the minimum age should be at least 15 (this is also the minimum requirement for the EU purposes.). Here at least there was greater compliance, and only 4 countries (3 in EEA) did not do so — where, in each case, the minimum age was 16 (Figure 14.1). There seems to be no particular correlation between the minimum age and type of census methodology, except perhaps that 7 out of the 9 countries with register-based census adopted a minimum age of 15 or 16.
The clear majority of responding countries (62 per cent) collected information on educational attainment by means of a full enumeration. Sample data were collected by a further 10 countries (21 per cent) 4 of which adopted a traditional census, 5 used a combined census methodology and one (the Netherlands) used data from registers. Excluding the 9 countries with register-based censuses, the clear majority of the other responding countries (three quarters, 30 out of 40) collected information on educational attainment by means of a full enumeration. The other 10 used either a partial enumeration or sample survey data to do so.
It is evident that in the nine register-based countries there are generally sufficient administrative data sources to provide information on this topic, although in the Netherlands the relevant data on attainment was collected from existing survey data, considered of better quality than register data.
Figure 14.1
Number of countries by minimum age for data collection on educational attainment and type of census
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
None <10 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Number of
countries
Minimum age for data collection
Register based Combined census Traditional census
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Other non-core educational topics
The CES Recommendations identified a number of other (non-core) education-related topics that could be considered for inclusion in international censuses. These covered:
Educational qualifications, defined at paragraph 340 of the CESR as: “…. the degrees, diplomas, certificates, etc. which have been conferred on a person by educational authorities, special examining bodies or professional bodies in his/her home country or abroad on the successful completion of a course of full time, part time or private study”.
Field of study, defined by ISCED at paragraph 342 of the CESR to mean: ”... the subject matter taught in an education programme”.
School attendance, defined at paragraph 348 of the CESR as: ”...regular attendance at any accredited educational institution or programme, public or private, for organized learning at any level of education”.
Literacy, defined at paragraph 353 of the CESR as: ”... the ability both to read and to write. If this topic is included in the census, the information collected should be designed to distinguish persons who are literate from those who are illiterate. A person who can, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement on his everyday life is literate. A person who cannot, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement on his everyday life may be considered to be illiterate.
Computer literacy, defined at paragraph 358 of the CESR as: ”... the ability to use basic computer applications to accomplish everyday tasks, particularly the ability to use word processing, spreadsheet, e-mail and web-browsing applications”.
Many countries collected at least some of the non-core educational topics, most commonly school attendance, collected by 34 countries, and literacy (25 countries) (Table 14.1). Data on such topics are often not available from administrative sources, except for field of study which may often be recorded on school and university registers, and this is borne out by the figures in the table.
Table 14.1
Numbers of countries including non-core educational topics in the census
Non-core topics
Total countries
Type of census Region Traditional
Register-based
Combined EEA Non-EEA
School attendance 34 25 3 6 19 15
Literacy 25 19 0 5 10 14
Field of study 19 12 5 2 13 6
Educational qualifications 16 13 2 1 9 7
Computer literacy 9 9 0 0 2 7
Length of school attendance (not in
the CES Recommendations) 2 1 0 1 1 1
Other educational topic(s) not
included in the CES Rec. 8 5 0 3 5 3
141 Usually such information can only be collected from either a traditional census questionnaire or sample survey, and it is notable that between them, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden collected any such information in only two instances, whereas ten of the traditional census countries (Albania, Azerbaijan, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Hungary, Ireland, Montenegro, and Serbia) together with Poland and Spain were each able to collect information on four of these topic.
Additionally, other education topics reported in the survey but not individually recorded in the table, included: completed years of schooling (Albania); whether attending school in the year before the census (Canada); age at which full time education ceased (Ireland); type of school, and special education (Poland); studies being undertaken in the week before the census (Spain); and attendance at pre-primary/nursery school (Turkey).
Another feature of Table 14.1 worthy of some note is that it was generally the case in the 2010 round that proportionately more non-EEA countries collected information on education topics than was the case among countries in the EEA (particular so in the case of computer literacy). This may reflect greater concerns among a number of non-EEA countries about the need to measure and improve levels of education generally.
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