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| | | | This edition of the HEA Statistics Unit newsletter brings together a wide range of recent developments and outputs that reflect the breadth of data collection and analysis undertaken across the higher education system. From national student and graduate surveys, to administrative data systems and thematic reports, each element contributes a distinct perspective on how students engage with, move through, and benefit from higher education in Ireland. The return of StudentSurvey.ie in 2026 marks a significant milestone, with a refreshed survey instrument capturing contemporary aspects of the student experience, including accommodation, finances, belonging, and digital engagement. Alongside this, the Graduate Outcomes Survey continues to provide valuable insight into graduate pathways, with recent refinements ensuring the survey remains aligned with evolving educational and labour market contexts. Together, these surveys offer complementary views of the student journey — from in-programme engagement to post-graduation outcomes. This issue also highlights key findings from progression, continuation, and completion reporting, providing a deeper understanding of how students navigate their studies over time, as well as new analysis on pathways into higher education, which sheds light on the diverse routes students take before entering the system. These insights are further supported by the ongoing work of the Student Records System, which underpins much of the system’s core data infrastructure and continues to evolve through the SRS 2.0 review programme. In addition, the newsletter outlines collaborative and thematic work, including analysis of student and graduate data from Gaeltacht areas, as well as updates on the System Performance Framework and dashboard, which bring together key indicators in an accessible format. Collectively, the items in this newsletter illustrate the range, depth, and continued development of the HEA’s statistical work, and the important role it plays in building a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of higher education across Ireland. If you would like to follow our social media platforms, the links are also below. You can sign up to receive this newsletter directly to your inbox by following the link below. |
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| | | | | StudentSurvey.ie is Ireland’s national survey of student engagement. StudentSurvey.ie aims to enhance transparency around students’ experiences of higher education and to provide a structured way for students to directly express their views on engagement within their institutions. It ensures that the student voice is actively heard and supports a meaningful partnership between higher education institutions and students’ unions to drive impact from survey findings. The survey also enables institutions to identify strengths and areas for improvement in student engagement, informing more effective policy, practice, and the ongoing enhancement of teaching, learning, and support services. In addition, it supports benchmarking by facilitating comparisons across the Irish higher education system and internationally. In 2026, a new survey for taught students returned after a three-year pause and now includes questions that explore specific and current topics of interest of multiple stakeholders - student representatives, institutions, and national policy actors have been added.These include: Survey fieldwork ran during February and March 2026 and the survey achieved an overall response rate of 23.5%. The results of the survey will be launched on December at the HEA Teaching and Learning Conference. You can access the survey questionnaire below, along with a paper which describes the survey review process between 2023 and 2025. In the meantime, those with an interest in StudentSurvey.ie data can access new analyses on PGR (postgraduate research) StudentSurvey.ie at the links below. |
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| | | | | | The Graduate Outcomes Survey is Ireland’s national survey of graduate destinations. Graduates are surveyed by their institutions nine months after graduation and the results are collated, analysed and published by the HEA as the national report. The Survey was reviewed in 2024, and the review recommendations are guiding the operation of the Survey in 2026. In addition to data validation reviews, an independent consultant was engaged to conduct a qualitative review of the survey through engagement with the Survey’s key stakeholders. The review found that in its current form, the Survey is operating to a high degree of efficiency and administration of the Survey by the HEIs allows for flexibility while contributing towards the strong response rate. Moreover, the survey timelines allowed graduates to be contacted in a reasonable time frame while careers offices were experiencing a less busy period. Additionally, the survey timelines allow graduates who have entered post-graduate studies to complete the survey in advance of completion of these studies. With reference to the survey questionnaire itself, stakeholders felt that the focus on short and factual questions reduced the cognitive load and time involved in survey completion. Therefore, the survey should not be lengthened as to do so may negatively impact survey completion. However, it was felt that there should be some refinements to the questions. For example, there should be a single question on Principal Economic Status (Main destination). Strong support was expressed for the retention and potential expansion of the more reflective questions, which it was felt generated valuable insights from respondents. The Review therefore made recommendations grouped under three headings: Enhance Communication and Promotion strategies for the Graduate Outcomes Survey. Review of the Survey's structure, with a focus on aligning questions to accurately reflect the contemporary demands of the professional landscape graduates are entering. Future-proof the Graduate Outcomes Survey, ensuring its continued relevance and effectiveness amid evolving educational and employment trends.
In relation to the first recommendation, the HEA has enhanced communication and promotion strategies of the Survey, aiming ensuring that relevant stakeholders are fully informed and engaged with both the Survey itself and its resulting data. For example, the HEA held a number of briefings with major stakeholder groups in Q1 2026. This included communication about the availability of the CSO Higher Education Outcomes reports as a complementary analysis to the Survey. The HEA also produced a promotional video featuring recent graduates to raise awareness of the Survey as the national report. The Survey recommended the establishment of a Stakeholder Reference Group, whose focus was the updating of the survey questionnaire itself. Therefore, a revised survey instrument is used in 2026. Key features are: A single Principal Economic Status (Main destination) question, with additional response options to facilitate graduates in employment and further study. Revised and updated graduate earnings bands A new section: Graduate Outlook A revised Experience of Higher Education question.
To align the survey more generally with evolving educational and employment trends, it was decided that the survey would from 2026 focus on graduates of major awards, and graduates of micro credentials and CPD awards would no longer be surveyed. On the other hand, it was proposed that the survey would continue to track graduates from (consortia-led) apprenticeships and also graduates from Tertiary programmes. A Data & Good Practice Group was also established to facilitate Survey practitioners to support each other in all elements of the survey life cycle. The Group was particularly supportive in the onboarding of three colleges which are joining the the Survey for the first time in 2026. |
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| | | | | Progression, Continuation & Completion |
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| This year’s Progression & Completion report features a new addition, incorporating Continuation rates beyond Year 1. Progression rates examine the number of new entrants (typically Year 1) who are still enrolled the following academic year. Continuation rates look beyond Year 2 and examine trends and transitions from Year 2 onwards, providing additional analysis and insights on continuation beyond Year 2. The following are some key findings from this report: Progression: Of the 2023/24 new entrants, 9.3% of new entrants did not progress in their own HEI or transfer to another HEI. This is the lowest non-progression rate since 2019/20. Education remains the field of study with the lowest rate of non-progression overall at 4.5%, while Services remains the field of study with the highest rate of non-progression overall at 18.8%. Services was the field of study with the largest decrease in non-progression year-on-year, dropping 4.9 percentage points from 23.7% (2022/2023) to 18.8% (2023/2024). New entrants whose primary entry basis was second level school leaving exams had the lowest non-progression rate in 2023/2024 at 8.9%, while new entrants whose primary entry basis was mature years had the highest rate of non-progression in 2023/2024 at 13.4%. New entrants with higher Leaving Certificate points tend to have lower non-progression rates. For example, 2023/2024 new entrants who earned points in the highest points band (600-625) had a non-progression rate of 1.2%. This is a consistent finding over the last six years.
Continuation: While 83.4% of 2020/2021 new entrants progressed from the first year of their studies to the subsequent course year of their studies, 69.8% of second year students continued to the third year of their studies. Within continuation, the rate of absence for 2020/2021 was 12.4% following year 1. This rose to 19.7% following year 2 and then to 22.9% the following academic year. This highlights that the largest absence rate of new entrants is seen between year 1 and year 2.
Completion: By 2024, the completion rate of 2019/2020 new entrants was 76.6%. This means that more than 3 in 4 new entrants who started their studies in 2019/20 had completed their studies and graduated with an award five years later. Education was the field of study with the highest completion rate for 2019/2020 new entrants at 90.4%. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction were the fields of study with the lowest rates of completion for 2019/2020 new entrants at 63.5%.
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| | | Pathways into higher education |
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| Recent decades have seen an expansion in the number of access routes to higher education. Mapping these pathways collectively has strategic value in enabling data-informed assessments of student access to higher education. The Higher Education Authority has recently published a new report which examined transition pathways connecting post-primary education, further education and training, and apprenticeships to higher education. The most common pathway to higher education identified was directly from completion of post-primary education. Females and students from Non-DEIS schools were more likely to follow this pathway than males and DEIS students. Alternatively, a large minority of students completed a post-leaving certificate (PLC) course following post-primary education. More than 40% of these students—more likely to be female or DEIS school students—subsequently enrolled in higher education. These students did not graduate from higher education at the same rate as students entering directly from post-primary education. Completion of a craft apprenticeship was not associated with higher education enrolment. This report represents a first edition of mapping pathways to higher education. Future work will incorporate increasingly fine-grained analyses of cross-sector educational pathways. |
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| | | | All higher education institutions have submitted data to the Student Record System (SRS) for the 2025/26 academic year, with a census date of 1 March 2026. The auditing and sign-off process is currently in progress. Data analysis and publication, including Key Facts & Figures, will be available in Q4 2026. Thank you to all HEIs for submitting the SRS returns on time and for the continued cooperation and engagement throughout the process. The review of the SRS, SRS 2.0, continues to progress in 2026. The Steering Group has met twice to date in 2026 and the Data Definitions, Standards & Classifications Subgroup have met once in 2026. The Staging Plan for SRS 2.0 was communicated in April. This Plan adopts a phased approach to implementation, introducing changes incrementally, rather than introducing changes all at once at one point in time. Stage I of the Staging Plan commences with the introduction of changes to the November 2027 data returns. The Statistics Unit will continue to progress the review of remaining data fields and classifications, and to plan for subsequent stages. |
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| | Collaboration with Údarás na Gaeltachta |
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| In collaboration with Údarás na Gaeltachta, the Statistics Unit are preparing to publish a short report (Info-Byte) examining student and graduate data from Gaeltacht areas. This report will examine information for students and graduates from Gaeltacht areas across the academic years 2022/23 to 2024/25 and will include comparisons with students and graduates from non-Gaeltacht areas. This analysis will include an exploration by characteristics such as gender, mode of study, socio-economic status, field of study, and graduate outcomes. Further information on this Info-Byte will be confirmed in the coming months, and this report will be made available on the HEA website. |
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| System Performance Framework |
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| The System Performance Framework 2023–2028 sets out parameters under which designated institutions of higher education identify their contribution to the achievement of institutional and national strategy, as appropriate to their mission, scale, location, and strategic plan. The framework is founded on a number of principles, including that it is to be Evidence-based, i.e.: identifying targets that are tailored, measurable, and impact-focused to support institutional effectiveness and efficiency. The creation of Performance Agreements with institutions, and the monitoring of same, underpins this process by providing a robust evidence base to enable the HEA to understand institutional and system health and to manage system-level opportunities and risks. The framework matrix comprises four key pillars representing the key domains of institutional activity: Teaching & Learning Research & Innovation Access & Participation Engagement
The System Performance Dashboard captures key system and institution level performance indicators aligned to the pillars of the framework in an accessible, interactive visualisation. The indicators presented in the dashboard align with the four pillars of the System Performance Framework outlined above and therefore complement the individualised Performance Agreements developed by institutions. The HEA’s understanding of an institution’s strategic performance against its Performance Agreement is enhanced by the system-level data presented in the dashboard. The dashboard therefore comprises of four tabs with selected indicators relating to relevant pillar. In addition, there is an overview tab providing high-level system wide indicators. The dashboard is updated by the HEA Statistics Team as new data becomes available. The largest tranche of updates take place in Q4, following the release of the Key Facts and Figures, with other data updated as it becomes available. The glossary tab provides further information on the data source and the date of last revision. The statistics team work with our colleagues in Statistics, Skills, EDI and Access who provide data and advice where appropriate on how best to present the data and of course we are happy to consider the feedback of external stakeholders also. |
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