The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) is the reference international classification for organising education programmes and related qualifications by levels and fields.
Lightcast encodes the educational requirements included in job postings to the ISCED 2011 (levels of education), which has been implemented in all EU data collections since 2014.
ISCED 2011 has nine education levels, from level 0 to level 8:
ISCED 0: Early childhood education (‘less than primary’ for educational attainment)
ISCED 1: Primary education
ISCED 2: Lower secondary education
ISCED 3: Upper secondary education
ISCED 4: Post-secondary non-tertiary education
ISCED 5: Short-cycle tertiary education
ISCED 6: Bachelor’s or equivalent level
ISCED 7: Master’s or equivalent level
ISCED 8: Doctoral or equivalent level
More details available here.
The Lightcast ISCED classifier classifies to these levels based on text in job postings, allowing for local differences in language to describe educational attainment requirements. The classifier can also detect when a posting for a teaching role requires applicants to be able to teach to a particular education level. For exampe - GCSE Teachers in the UK require a greater level of educational attainment than "GCSE".