Data sources

​This service publishes data which is derived from registers or is based on data collected by Statistics Finland, the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Finnish National Agency for Education.

Statistics Finland

Statistics Finland collects data on students and qualifications through education providers directly from educational institutions, the Koski information resource, the national information resource for higher education institutions (VIRTA) and the matriculation examination register.

Statistics Finland maintains a register of the qualification data it collects. It combines this data with, for example, data from its employment register and population data from the Digital and Population Data Services Agency.

In the employment register, the statistical population is the population permanently residing in Finland on the last day of the year. The data is mainly derived from administrative registers and statistical data.

Some of Statistics Finland’s datasets are based on combining the above-mentioned data on individuals with register data. Such data can be used to examine, for example, pass rates in education (study progress), discontinuation of studies or placement of graduates in the world of work.

Additionally, Statistics Finland regularly collects data on teachers in primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education, in liberal adult education and in basic education in the arts.

Finnish National Agency for Education

The Finnish National Agency for Education collects from education providers the cost and operational data on which the central government transfer for primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education is based, with the exception of the cost data for municipalities’ pre-primary, primary, lower secondary and general upper secondary education, which is collected by the State Treasury.

The Finnish National Agency for Education maintains the national information resource for teaching and education (Koski), the student admissions register (post-comprehensive school admissions and higher education admissions), and the early childhood education and care information resource (Varda). Data from these resources is used in statistics. Koski contains data on personal competence development plans (eHOKS) for vocational education and training students recorded in the register.

The Finnish National Agency for Education collects data on students’ international mobility from higher education institutions.

​Ministry of Education and Culture

The Ministry of Education and Culture collects data from universities and universities of applied sciences on their operations, personnel and economic activity.

The reports use data collected from the VIRTA higher education achievement register and the VIRTA publication information service.

The Finnish National Agency for Education's guidance and regulation service Oiva contains data on education providers’ authorisations to provide education across the levels of education.

​Others

The Matriculation Examination Board collects the matriculation examination grades.

The Finnish National Agency for Education’s education management information service Arvo collects data on career monitoring, student feedback and employer feedback.

Vipunen's other data sources include the Business Information System (BIS), ETER (European Tertiary Education Register), OECD, Web of Science (bibliometrics), Scopus (bibliometrics), CORDIS (European Commission).