[wdmmg-discuss] COFOG classifiers for educaton.

Fri Jun 11 10:25:54 UTC 2010

Currently we describe COFOG code 09.2 as "Secondary Schools", but as
far as i can tell (see below) it includes things such as 6th form
colleges and FE colleges that wouldn't really be described as
Secondary Schools (for example, the 6th form college I attended for 2
years immediately prior to my degree had no secondary school
attached).

We should probably rename 09.2 as "Secondary Schools and FE Colleges"
or somesuch.  That's not very snappy, and I'd welcome input from
someone who actually knew about it.

COFOG code 09.2 has two children: 09.2.1 covers ISCED-97 level 2;
09.2.2 covers ISCED-97 level 3.

I'm no expert (well, not in education statistics!), but my reading of
ISCED-97 ( http://www.uis.unesco.org/TEMPLATE/pdf/isced/ISCED_A.pdf )
is that level 2 is what we would call "Secondary Schools" (ages 11 to
16); and level 3 is that we could call "6th forms / FE colleges" and
includes things that are not really "Secondary Schools".

COFOG code 09.3 (currently "Post-Secondary") is really vocational
qualifications (again, as far as I can tell).

COFOG code 09.4 (currently "??????" which is a clear bug and how I got
here) covers ISCED-97 levels 5 and 6 and is university degrees
(undergraduate and postgraduate respectively).

The UK doesn't produce a national mapping which would presumably
clarify which codes they use:
http://www.uis.unesco.org/ev_en.php?ID=7434_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC

drj