The event combined group discussions with country presentations and an update on other recent research on graduate tracking systems across Europe, including the comparability of systems across countries.  The event found:

• Consensus that graduate tracking is a valuable tool for monitoring the outcomes of VET and supporting the green and digital transitions in Europe. It helps identify the numbers entering these roles, competence in the digital and green skills needed for their role and those doing digital and green work-based training.
• Evidence of progress towards creating a harmonised European system, but with challenges remaining in terms of improving the response rates, ensuring the consistency and comparability of data across different countries and organisations, and addressing the issues of data protection.
• Examples from Estonia and the Netherlands focused on using graduate tracking to support the delivery of national skills priorities. In Estonia, the national graduate tracking uses multiple administrative data sources to measure the employment indicators of its education strategy, as well as to provide insights into the pay and its variance by time, education level and whether in/out of work. The Netherlands Study and Work project is not a national graduate tracking measure but a research study undertaken by SEO Amsterdam Economics. It provides prospective students and their parents about the labour market outcomes of various education programmes and policy makers with intelligence of VET labour market entry.

This was the fifth peer learning event over the last two years that has been specifically examining graduate tracking in VET. A further three events are scheduled to be delivered over the next 18 months.