Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

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	MEDIA RELEASE
March 30, 2010	Embargo: 11.30 am (CANBERRA TIME) 30/03/2010	33/2010
Australia: highly educated, work drives higher learning: ABS

People with a Bachelor degree or higher were most likely to be employed as professionals or managers and people without a non-school qualification were most likely to be employed as clerical and administrative workers or labourers.

The most common field of study in formal learning was management and commerce (26%) followed by society and culture (20%).

The ABS also found that women are more likely than men to posses a Bachelor degree, but men are more likely to have completed a Certificate III/IV.

Since 2001, the proportion of people with a tertiary qualification has increased by 13%.

The main reason people undertook work-related courses was that it was a requirement of their job. The health care and social assistance industry accounted for the majority of non-formal learning followed by the education and training industry.

Excluding the completion of school study, Australians of working age are more likely to have attained a Certificate III/IV (2.5 million) as their highest education qualification than any other educational qualification.

TAFE was the most popular institution for tertiary studies in the last 12 months, with over 300,000 students having completed study at TAFE compared with approximately 240,000 students at university. ACT residents are more likely to have completed a Bachelor degree or above (36%) than those persons in any other state or territory.

Further information is available in Education and Training Experience, Australia 2009 (cat. no. 6278.0) available for download from the ABS website,<www.abs.gov.au>.

Media Note:
Non-school qualifications are awarded for educational attainments other than those of pre-primary, primary or secondary education. They include qualifications at the Postgraduate Degree level, Master Degree level, Graduate Diploma and Graduate Certificate level, Bachelor Degree level, Advanced Diploma and Diploma level, and Certificates I, II, III and IV levels.

When reporting ABS data the Australian Bureau of Statistics (or ABS) must be attributed as the source.