Swedish Standard Classification of Education (SUN)

Definition

Hierarchical nomenclature describing education in terms of educational level and educational field.

Description

Svensk utbildningsklassifkation (SUN) is used for classifying education. SUN provides the conditions for producing comparable statistics and analysis of population, education and the Swedish education system, both nationally and internationally. SUN consists of two classifications: one describing education level and another describing education field.

SUN in the Taxonomy

There are two versions of the SUN structures implemented in the Taxonomy. In version 1, SUN2000 is still used. The new classification, SUN2020, is present in versions after it

Looking at SUN2020, the two structures are represented with the type(s) sun-education-level-{n} and sun-education-field-{n}, nbeing a variable expressing a number from 1 to 3 for education levels and 1 to 4 for education fields. The number signifies a hierachical level. For instance, concepts with the type sun-education-field-1 are found on the least detailed level of the education field structure.

Each concept is attributed with a statistically significant SUN code. The name of this attribute differs between concepts in the two structures. Concepts in the level structure carry the SUN code in the sun-education-level-code-2020 attribute and concepts in the field structure in the sun-education-field-code-2020 attribute.

The hierarchical relations within the structures are expressed with broader (or, inversely, narrower) relations.

See GraphQL examples for examples on how to query the Taxonomy for SUN concepts.

Keywords

A list of keywords, provided and maintained by SCB, tied to educational fields at their most detailed level has been implemented in the Taxonomy.

These concepts can be utilized for helping end users find suitable sun-education-field-4 concepts.

See for instance the following example, in which the string "kostvetenskap" is supplied as input.

query MyQuery {
  concepts(type: "keyword", preferred_label_contains: "kostvetenskap") {
    id
    preferred_label
    type
    related (type: "sun-education-field-4"){
      id
      preferred_label
      type
      sun_education_field_code_2020
    }
  }
}

To which, presently (version 22), the response will look like this:

{
  "data": {
    "concepts": [
      {
        "id": "qptt_gUa_Ln9",
        "preferred_label": "Kostvetenskap",
        "type": "keyword",
        "related": [
          {
            "id": "zFUS_WCq_uHh",
            "preferred_label": "Biokemi, toxikologi, farmakologi och nutrition",
            "type": "sun-education-field-4",
            "sun_education_field_code_2020": "421b"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Special relations

To describe the feasability of combining a sun-education-level-2 concept and a sun-education-field-3concept, two special relation types have been created. You can read more on them in the following chapters:

• possible-combinations
• unlikely-combinations

All relations included, the SUN structures, can be illustrated as follows:

graph LR;

A --broader--> B
B --broader--> C

    A("sun-education-level-3");
    B("sun-education-level-2");
    C("sun-education-level-1");

D --broader--> E
E --broader--> F
F --broader--> G

    D("sun-eduation-field-4")
    E("sun-eduation-field-3")
    F("sun-eduation-field-2")
    G("sun-eduation-field-1")

    H("keyword")

B --possible-combinations--> E
B --unlikely-combinations--> E
H <--related--> D

Governance

SUN is managed by Statistics Sweden (SCB). The implementation at Arbetsförmedlingen is handled by the editorial team at Jobtech.

GraphQL examples

Below examples can be tested through our Graphi-QL GUI.

Get entire SUN level structure

query MyQuery {
  concepts(type: "sun-education-level-1") {
    id
    preferred_label
    type
    sun_education_level_code_2020
    narrower(type: "sun-education-level-2") {
      id
      preferred_label
      type
      sun_education_level_code_2020
      narrower(type: "sun-education-level-3") {
        id
        preferred_label
        type
        sun_education_level_code_2020
      }
    }
  }
}

Get SUN level structure with SUN field combinations

query MyQuery {
  concepts(type: "sun-education-level-1") {
    id
    preferred_label
    type
    sun_education_level_code_2020
    narrower(type: "sun-education-level-2") {
      id
      preferred_label
      type
      sun_education_level_code_2020
      possible_combinations(type: "sun-education-field-3") {
        id
        preferred_label
        type
        sun_education_field_code_2020
      }
      unlikely_combinations(type: "sun-education-field-3") {
        id
        preferred_label
        type
        sun_education_field_code_2020
      }
      narrower(type: "sun-education-level-3") {
        id
        preferred_label
        type
        sun_education_level_code_2020
      }
    }
  }
}

Get SUN field structure with keywords

query MyQuery {
  concepts(type: "sun-education-field-1") {
    id
    preferred_label
    type
    sun_education_field_code_2020
    narrower(type: "sun-education-field-2") {
      id
      preferred_label
      type
      sun_education_field_code_2020
      narrower(type: "sun-education-field-3") {
        id
        preferred_label
        type
        sun_education_field_code_2020
        narrower(type: "sun-education-field-4") {
          id
          preferred_label
          type
          sun_education_field_code_2020
          related(type: "keyword") {
            id
            preferred_label
            type
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}