What we’ve learnt from the first million interactions with Pathways

Posted on 12th November 2019 by Tim Ketterer

Although it’s still early days for Pathways, our first year has seen the tool being adopted by over 20 organisations, which we are really happy about. With lots of people now using Pathways we thought we’d look into our own data to see if we could see anything interesting.

Below we have compiled some statistics from all the organisations using Pathways over the past year. The data shows the top 5 interactions with various aspects of the tool.

The data however does come with a caveat and should be taken with a pinch of salt as it is by no means a complete picture, but we still think it makes for interesting reading.

Most viewed Jobs

1. Marketing associate professionals (6.54%)
2. Nurses (5.70%)
3. Programmers and software development professionals (4.55%)
4. Teaching assistants (4.55%)
5. Primary and nursery education teaching professionals (4.19)

Most viewed courses

1. BTEC Health and Social Care (7.37%)
2. BTEC Applied Science (3.29%)
3. BTEC Childcare (2.83%)
4. A Level Psychology (2.66%)
5. BTEC Engineering (2.55%)

Most viewed job sectors

1. Childcare, education & training (4.10%)
2. Hair, beauty & wellbeing (3.78%)
3. Building trades (3.68%)
4. Art & design (2.62%)
5. Engineering (2.11%)

Most viewed HE courses

1. Nursing (12.06%)
2. Academic studies in education (8.41%)
3. Mechanical engineering (6.86%)
4. Business studies (6.21%)
5. Computer science (5.74%)

Most viewed apprenticeships

1. Teacher (4.58%)
2. Aerospace engineer (3.25%)
3. Plumbing and Domestic Heating Technician (2.51%)
4. Hair Professional (2.36%)
5. Registered nurse (2.22%)

Most viewed videos

1. Mechanical engineers (9.54%)
2. Nurses (5.96%)
3. Psychologists (4.17%)
4. Sports coaches, instructors and officials (3.98%)
5. Marketing associate professionals (3.78%)

Whilst we understand that the data is extracted from a relatively small sample, if you were to read anything into it, there are some interesting conclusions you could draw.

For example, a recent report from the LMI Team at Education Development Trust commented on the reduction of numbers of those applying to do nursing at HE level:

The ongoing issue of the shortage of nurses. The Royal College of Nursing has issued its own manifesto as a challenge to politicians to address this issue. In terms of supply, looking at the higher education data from HESA on the entry to nursing degrees, the number of first year undergraduates in the UK has fallen from 32,590 in 2014/15 to 30,900 in 2017/18.
Supporting Inspiration LMI Bulletin

Our data however suggests that nursing is actually one of the highest viewed occupations as well as being the top HE course for those students visiting the college websites where Pathways is embedded. Our data shows that potentially the popularity for studying nursing at HE level might increase over the next few years.