Appendix B - Australian postcodes
Several data elements reference Australian postcodes and included in the Higher Education Student, VET and University Applications and Offers data collections. The elements are:
- Location code of term residence (element 319)
- Location code of permanent home residence (element 320)
- Postal address – postcode (element 409)
- Address of permanent home residence – postcode (element 413)
- Postcode or overseas country code location of Higher education / VET provider campus/delivery location (element 477)
- Course campus postcode (element 559)
The current list of Australian postcodes is available to download from the Australia Post website.
Alternatively you can search for Australian postcodes at Australia Post - Post Code Search.
Appendix C - Standard Australian Classification of Countries
The Standard Australian Classification of Countries (SACC) is published statistics classified by country. It is a classification based on a country’s geographical proximity and similarity in terms of social, cultural, economic and political characteristics. It is referenced by several data elements and one or more of these elements are used by all four data collections. The data elements are:
- Location code of term residence (element 319)
- Location code of permanent home residence (element 320)
- Country of birth code (element 346)
- Address of permanent home residence – postcode (element 413)
- Postcode or overseas country code location of Higher education / VET provider campus/delivery location (element 477)
- OS‑HELP country of study code – primary (element 553)
- OS‑HELP country of study code – secondary (element 554)
- Course campus postcode (element 559)
- Postal address – country code (element 728)
The SACC is available to download from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. If you use Internet Explorer you may get a security warning in the bar at the top of the browser window when you click the .XLS icon to download the file. If this happens, click the security warning bar and select Download File, allowing the page to reload. Then click the .XLS icon again for options to Save or Open the file.
Reference Table 1.3 Major Groups, Minor Groups and Countries for the Standard Australian Classification of Countries (SACC) in the Excel document from the Data Downloads link below.
Appendix D - Australian Standard Classification of Languages
The Australian Standard Classification of Languages (ASCL) is used for statistical and administrative data relating to the languages spoken in Australia. It is referenced in the following data elements:
- Language spoken at home code (element 348)
- OS‑HELP Language code (element 582)
The ASCL is available to download from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. If you use Internet Explorer you may get a security warning in the bar at the top of the browser window when you click the .XLS icon to download the file. If this happens, click the security warning bar and select Download File, allowing the page to reload. Then click the .XLS icon again for options to Save or Open the file.
Reference Table 1.3 Broad groups, narrow groups and languages for the Australian Standard Classification of Languages (ASCL) in the Excel document from the Data Downloads link below.
Appendix E - Field of education classification
The field of education classification is used to describe the principal subject matter of higher education and VET courses and units of study. This is also referred to as the Australian Standard Classification of Education (ASCED).
Its main purpose is to ensure courses, specialisations and units of study with the same or similar vocational emphasis are reliably classified as belonging to the same "field of education". It is used nationally in all administrative and survey collections which incorporate data on education by field.
There are two main elements in the Higher Education Student, VET data collections and University Application and Offers data collections that use the Field of education classification. These are:
- Field of education code (element 461) to classify a course.
- Discipline code (element 464) to classify a unit of study.
This classification is also used for:
- Field of education supplementary code (element 462) for combined degrees.
- Specialisation code (element 463) for higher education course completions.
- Field details (element 562) for prior VET study.
How to code your field of education / discipline codes
This classification is available on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website.