Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) from Scottish Colleges: 2016-2017

Introduction to the College to Employment LEO release

Colleges provide an opportunity for individuals to obtain the appropriate skills and knowledge necessary to find employment in a particular field of interest or gain additional qualifications needed to enter university.

Individuals included in this release must have been studying a full-time HNC/HND course at college and left in 2012/13 with a successful outcome, and be recorded as in sustained employment in the 2016/17 tax year.

This experimental release reports the total earnings of individuals who have completed a course at a Scottish college three full tax years after completion.

Total earnings represent the sum of the annualised PAYE earnings and raw self-assessment earnings.

The median earnings presented in this release should not be used as a way to rank courses, colleges or levels of study, nor to draw any conclusions about earnings gaps, due to the limitations of the LEO data.

• The PAYE and self-assessment systems do not collect information on the number of hours worked, therefore we cannot make distinctions between part‑time and full-time earnings. As a result gender comparisons should be treated with caution as we know in general more females work part-time compared to males, and this will also apply to certain occupational groupings where there is a higher proportion of part-time workers.
• Earnings can vary greatly across different regions of Scotland. The PAYE and self-assessment systems do not collect information on the location of an individual's employment; meaning we cannot account for any regional variations.