The Pathways for the Future Program aims to create a comprehensive evidence base for the department to improve the education and training system to better prepare our students as lifelong learners and equip them with the knowledge, skills and attributes for meaningful work and life.

This program builds on the pilot project which was established in 2017 by the NSW Department of Industry. This aimed to better understand young people’s education-to-work pathways, drive improvements to education and work outcomes, and lift overall system performance.

The current Pathways Outcomes for Learners uses data from the new and extended Pathways for the Future Program, which links demographic, education, and employment data on over 6.5 million NSW people aged between 11 and 67 within NSW from 1996 onwards.

The data is de-identified and aggregated, and individual students and learners cannot be identified.

Using this data, we analysed different student and learner groups, mapped their pathways through senior secondary school, tertiary education and into work at ages 21, 24 and 27, and explored the drivers of positive employment outcomes. Visualising outcomes at multiple ages provides a richer understanding of the outcomes of various student and learner pathways over time. The BETA version, which included pilot data up to the age of 24, showed that many young people are still studying at age 24.

The following caveats should be kept in mind when using the dashboard:

• The data for each student and learner group provides a snapshot of education-to-employment pathways up to age 27. Longer-term outcomes for each group may vary, especially for pathways with longer study lengths.
• The data presented is descriptive and exploratory in nature and does not identify root causes of educational outcomes achieved by students.
• Education-to-employment pathways can be shaped by many factors not explored in this dashboard, including economic, wellbeing and social circumstances, as well as student experiences with the justice, health and social services systems. These factors are likely to be especially important when looking at particular segments of young people.
• Outcomes at age 27 include income and income support received during 2021, which were impacted by large changes in the labour market during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We recommend caution when comparing outcome measures from this period with earlier measures.
• Income reported in the dashboard and fact sheets has not been adjusted for inflation.

The NSW Department of Education would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following organisations involved in the Pathways for the Future Program:

• Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
• Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA)
• Monash Health Research Committee
• National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER)
• NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA)
• NSW Ministry of Health and the Centre for Health Record Linkage (CHeReL)
• NSW Skills Board
• TAFE NSW
• the Office of the Student Identifiers Registrar (OSIR)
• the Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA) accessed through the ABS DataLab
• Universities Admissions Centre (UAC).

We would also like to note the following statement about PLIDA data:

The results of these studies are based, in part, on data supplied to the ABS under the Taxation Administration Act 1953, A New Tax System (Australian Business Number) Act 1999, Australian Border Force Act 2015, Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, A New Tax System (Family Assistance) (Administration) Act 1999, Paid Parental Leave Act 2010 and/or the Student Assistance Act 1973. Such data may only be used for the purpose of administering the Census and Statistics Act 1905 or performance of functions of the ABS as set out in section 6 of the Australian Bureau of Statistics Act 1975 (the ABS Act). No individual information collected under the Census and Statistics Act 1905 is provided back to custodians for administrative or regulatory purposes. Any discussion of data limitations or weaknesses is in the context of using the data for statistical purposes and is not related to the ability of the data to support the Australian Taxation Office, Australian Business Register, Australian Government Department of Social Services and/or Australian Government Department of Home Affairs’ core operational requirements.

Legislative requirements to ensure privacy and secrecy of these data have been followed. For access to PLIDA and/or Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (BLADE) data under section 16A of the ABS Act 1975 or enabled by section 15 of the Census and Statistics (Information Release and Access) Determination 2018, source data are de-identified and so data about specific individuals has not been viewed in conducting this analysis. In accordance with the Census and Statistics Act 1905, results have been treated where necessary to ensure that they are not likely to enable identification of a particular person or organisation.