Regional and remote - Ministerial Council on Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) measure
Student's postcode of permanent home residence was used to map students to regional classifications under the Ministerial Council on Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) classification of regions. The MCEETYA classification was built using the Australian Bureau of Statistics' 2006 Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) Remoteness Structure, but with specific adjustments to cater for the department's special needs.
Under the MCEETYA classification, the number of students from a metropolitan, regional or remote area can be calculated. Data related to the MCEETYA classification was published up until 2011.
Technical notes
Regional status is assigned to domestic students only, excluding domestic students who have a permanent home address overseas.
To calculate regional status, permanent home residence (E320) for each student was used. When deriving a student's regional status for a particular year, the relevant postcode of permanent home residence for that year was used. The calculation uses the student's earliest available E320 value in the given year, as the initial value more closely represents the student's background.
Each student's postcode is mapped to metropolitan, regional and remote categories. Postcodes can be mapped to multiple categories meaning that fractions can occur. For example, a postcode may be classified as 75% regional (0.75 regional) and 25% remote (0.25 remote). A postcode in the middle of Sydney however would be classified as 100% metropolitan and students in this postcode would receive a score of '1' for the metropolitan category (and '0' for the regional and remote categories). Integers and fractions are then summed across a data set to calculate an estimate of the number of students from a metropolitan, regional or remote area.
A regional student includes those students from either an Inner Regional or Outer Regional area as defined under the ASGC.
A remote student includes those students from either a Remote or Very Remote area as defined under the ASGC.
A small number of students are unable to be classified to a regional classification and these students are therefore assigned to 'unknown'.
Application of glossary term:- Statistical outputs