So much data: Mapping Australian school and tertiary education public data
Geoffrey Mitchell, Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES) 2024 Visiting Scholar
Across Australia, large volumes of educational data are collected and published every year. However, across the student life journey and state, territory and national jurisdictions, it can be difficult to know where to find the data you want and whether it includes the parameters you are interested in. In 2024, I embarked on an Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES) Visiting Scholar project to map publicly available data sources from school to tertiary education and to investigate new opportunities to improve understanding of educational pathways and outcomes for different student cohorts.
One outcome of this project has been the publication of a searchable table of Education Data Sources by the ACSES team. This resource provides an introduction and links to over 100 publicly available school, tertiary and population data sources at the national, state and territory level. Data sources can be searched across data domain, information type and jurisdiction, and each listing indicates if data is available for selected student cohorts, including First Nations Australians, non-English speaking background students, students with disability, regional or remote students, and by socio-economic status (SES).
Six Data Domains
Data has been organised into six domains across key stages in the student learning journey – schooling; post-school destinations and transitions; tertiary admissions; vocational education and training; and higher education – as well as broader population statistics.
Schooling data includes Government, Catholic and Independent school lists and searchable directories for schools in each system or jurisdiction. These directories usually include addresses and contact details, with some providing greater detail on school demographics and outcomes. State and territory education authorities also publish a diversity of enrolment, achievement and outcomes data, with wide variation across jurisdictions according to measures included and the level of data published. Some systems provide access to school or regional level data, while others only publish state summary data. Where available, this data can be useful for understanding student pathways, level of tertiary preparation and differences across student cohorts.
For university practitioners planning outreach work with schools, the ACARA School Profile is a good starting point to search for schools in your jurisdiction that meet low SES and regional criteria. This dataset also includes total school enrolment as well as enrolment for First Nations students and students from language backgrounds other than English. Some state directories, such as Western Australia’s Schools Online, provide access to school outcomes data, including NAPLAN results and ATAR attainment. Both of these data sets are included in the new ACSES Education Data Sources.
Post-school transitions data includes destination surveys administered by six of the eight states and territories to students in the year following Year 12 completion or, in some cases, surveys of students who left school at earlier stages. Again, there is a wide variety in reporting from state summaries to school or regional profiles. Where destination data can be mapped against student demographics such as SES status, regionality or Indigenous status, stark differences are apparent in the uptake of tertiary studies and the types of destinations pursued by different student cohorts.
For example, a now searchable on the ACSES resource, the Queensland Next Steps website allows users to create custom reports for a variety of geographies and include disaggregation by sex, SES background and Indigenous status. Longitudinal tracking has also been undertaken for both Year 12 and early leaver cohorts in Queensland.
Tertiary Admissions Centres are usually responsible for undergraduate applications and offers data as well as ATAR calculation. While most provide technical data on ATAR calculation and scoring, often only limited summary data is published on ATAR attainment, applications and offers. Published data shows a wide discrepancy across states and territories in the proportion of Year 12 graduates who receive an ATAR, though accurate interstate comparisons are difficult to make. In most jurisdictions, it is not possible to determine the ATAR achievement rate for different student cohorts; however, where data is available, the proportion of students receiving an ATAR is significantly lower for First Nations students, low SES students and students from regional and remote locations.
The national Undergraduate Applications Offers and Acceptances publications provide more comprehensive university application data, including direct applications, though, in recent years, there have been significant time lags in publication. The latest data available is for 2024.
Vocational Education and Training, including national and state level data on VET activity, attainment and funding, as well as survey data on graduate satisfaction and outcomes, is compiled by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research (NCVER) and available in a variety of formats. The NCVER data repository is extensive, however the complexity of funding, provider types and qualification levels, requires some level of VET knowledge to correctly interpret this data. Some states and territories also publish local VET data. For example, the Tasmanian Regional Enrolments Data Tool includes a data slicer and interactive map to explore VET activity by Local Government Area.
Higher Education data includes the Australian Government’s national collection as well as the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) survey data on student experience and graduate outcomes. A range of visual analytics, pivot tables and Excel tables help in navigating this large data set, including specific equity group and First Nations student data. The ACSES interactive tool is also a useful resource for exploring national higher education equity data by institution, university affiliation, state or territory.
Population statistics have been included in the new ACSES Table, also as these provide information and mapping of community demographics and educational attainment. This includes ABS census data, community profiles and interactive maps. The ABS interactive maps are useful for identifying the socio-economic status of areas, with interesting differences revealed when the four Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) are compared. While developed for the health workforce, DoctorConnect is an easy-to-use locator for remoteness areas. The Closing the Gap Information Repository and the Australian Child and Youth Wellbeing Atlas are also included in this domain on the ACSES compilation. The Australian Child and Youth Wellbeing Atlas maps a large range of health, wellbeing and learning data across jurisdictions and smaller regional areas. The currency and regional breakdown of data that is available is revealing even though little of the data in the learning domain is able to be broken down beyond state or territory level.
Conclusion
Whether you are a new or established user of data, this resource provides an opportunity to quickly find and explore a large range of public data from a single readily searchable site. While there has been a growth in data transparency and open data access, privacy and other legislative requirements place limitations on what can be released. A scan across jurisdictions also reveals the use of different measures and different approaches to data collection and publication.
Whether you are working in policy or program delivery, this data map may help you find new data sources to assist in program targeting, monitoring or evaluation, and introduce you to some new approaches to data analysis or presentation.
Caveats
The focus of this resource is on publicly available domestic school and tertiary education data. Specific early childhood and international education data have not been included, nor has it included survey data that is not education-specific (such as generic childhood and youth surveys).
Geoffrey Mitchell was an ACSES 2024 Visting Scholar and Project Manager for the Queensland Widening Tertiary Participation Consortium from 2011 to 2025