Development of Graduate Tracking Mechanisms in Latvia

ended

According to the Commission Communication to achieve European Education Area by 2025, feedback from the graduates is essential for ensuring that knowledge, skills and competence acquired by students are relevant to the labour market. In line with the Council Recommendations on tracking graduates and national reforms of higher education in Latvia, there is a need to strengthen monitoring mechanisms for graduates study and employment outcomes. Graduate tracking as a centralised system currently in Latvia is based on administrative data. At national level it has already been implemented in higher education since 2019 (graduation year 2017) while the work on graduate tracking in VET is ongoing. Currently, graduate employment and learning outcomes is not assessed by using national level surveys. Each higher education institution collects information on graduates` employment separately. Thereby, data are not comparable at the national level. The main objective of the Project is to strengthen development of graduate tracking mechanisms in Latvia and to provide qualitative, comparable and longitudinal data to international comparative study. The main outcomes of the Project are improved graduate tracking mechanisms in Latvia trough approbation and implementation of the Eurograduate Survey, improved data collection procedures, data quality and survey results dissemination; developed recommendations for graduate survey data (indicators) inclusion into higher education quality monitoring system. The results of the study will be used to develop the evidence-based higher education policy, in to improve quality of higher education institutions and to promote cooperation between employers, employers' organisations, higher education institutions and policy-makers and other groups. Main stakeholders are higher education institutions, policy - makers, employers, employer organizations, NGO, public.