Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to publish data on graduate career progression to assess the long-term impact of higher education on entry into high-skilled employment.

As set out in the Post-16 education and skills white paper, this government is determined that our world leading higher education (HE) system drives economic growth by creating a highly skilled workforce.

The independent regulator of the HE sector, the Office for Students (OfS) defines high-skilled employment as those working in occupations within the Standard Occupation Classification codes 1-3 (managers, directors and senior officials; professional occupations; and associate professional occupations).

The OfS publish progression rates for graduates measuring the proportion with positive outcomes including those in high skilled employment and/or further education as part of the student outcomes dashboard. Data for the English HE sector and by provider is available here: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/data-and-analysis/student-outcomes-data-dashboard/data-dashboard/. This data is published annually and was last published in August 2025.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency also publish annual statistics in the ‘Graduate Outcomes’ publication. This looks at the outcomes of graduates 15 months after their graduation, including high skilled employment, defined as above. This data is published annually and was last published in July 2025 here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/graduates.