Written by IFF Research

Using Graduate Index to better prepare graduates for the working world

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Recent analysis of the relative performance of different occupations in our 2021 Graduate Index pan-sector survey data found that teachers score highly on all measures of graduate success. Graduate Index is a tool which measures graduate success across seven different social and personal measures to give a broader picture of what graduates go on to achieve.

We’ve plotted the 7 Graduate Index scores for teaching professionals (in orange) and health professionals (in blue) in the chart below. For comparison we’ve also included scores for all occupations combined, in dark green. Overall Graduate Index scores for the 3 groups appear in the speech bubbles at the bottom.

Teachers score the highest overall Graduate Index score (67.4) and score highest on 5 of the individual measures – social capital, civic engagement, confidence, fulfilment and career progression. However, they fare less well when it comes to resilience, scoring slightly below average.

Health professionals also perform reasonably well – in line with the average across 4 of the measures and scoring highly (though not quite as high as teachers) on fulfilment and career progression. However, civic engagement levels are noticeably lower among this group (more than 6 points lower than the average and more than 7 lower than teachers).

This analysis highlights how Graduate Index can help challenge views on what rewarding occupations are, by clearly demonstrating positive stories of those that are aren’t necessarily the most highly paid. But it also shows us that there’s more to learn about where graduates end up and the jobs that they do. It shows us that there is still room to better prepare graduates for the roles they want to pursue and develop the support that is available to them during their higher education experience. That might be building in more support around resilience for those wanting to pursue a teaching career or allowing our future health professionals to engage more actively in the community around them.

You can download the full pan-sector report here. Or, get in touch if you’d like to understand how Graduate Index can help your institution.