10/02 - July

To: ITT Providers in England

Dear Colleagues

2010/11 INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING IN-YEAR RECORD COLLECTION (REF: C10053)

This Circular contains links to documents and further guidance that are required for the C10053 data collection. Institutions should therefore review the information contained in the following documents:

• Timescales for the data collection
• Validation overview
• Data collection process

Key deadlines

The timescale for the C10053 data collection is as follows:

Data for all TDA-funded Initial Teacher Training (ITT) provision must be provided as a first submission by 01 October 2010 and should be finalised by the 2^nd Wednesday in October. HEIs can, with TDA permission, update this information until the 4th Wednesday in October (27 October 2010) and it is on this date that the final download of data will be taken by the TDA. TDA will use this data to create the Trainee Numbers Census. Therefore submission after this date is unlikely to be acceptable to the TDA.

Timings for submitting records to the GTCE for Provisional Registration are very much dependent upon the start date of the individual student on the course and could be anytime in the reporting period 01 August 2010 - 31 July 2011. As there are likely to be many different commencement dates for different providers, HESA will not be monitoring or chasing-up individual submissions. However, GTCE will be keeping a record of submissions and may check with an HEI if they believe provisional registrations are not being submitted within 28 days of the commencement of a course, as required by legislation.

Data quality and validation

In order to be accepted by HESA, data must pass HESA validation checks. Institutions are encouraged to test their data locally using the validation kits made available by HESA before submitting data to the collection. Data which fails validation will not be considered to have been returned to the Agency.

For further information about validation and to download the validation kit please review the Validation overview section for this collection.

Further guidance

1) Coverage

It is mandatory to return all students (both entrants and continuing) on Initial Teacher Training (ITT) courses leading to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) within the ITT In-Year Record including TDA-funded flexible provision, but excluding SAS, SCITT and SKE. For further guidance on the coverage of the record please review the full Coverage document.

2) Student.ITTCOMDATE

Student.ITTCOMDATE is a new field for 2010/11 which captures the start date of the ITT course where this is different to the start date of the instance. For example, where a student transfers from a non-ITT course to an ITT course the ITTCOMDATE field will record the start date of the ITT course, and the COMDATE field, which reflects the start date of the instance, will not change. The ITTCOMDATE field is currently optional and only needs to be completed where the start date of the ITT course is different to the start date of the instance, however it will become mandatory for 2011/12.

3) Student.DISABLE

For 2010/11 the coding frame for the disability field is being updated to be brought into line with the new coding frame used for the 2010/11 Student Record. HESA will continue to accept codes 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 10, 11, 97, 98 and 99 for continuing students and there will be no requirement for institutions to resurvey or recode. However, institutions are welcome to use the new codes for continuing students if they wish to do so. The new coding frame must be used for new entrants with a COMDATE after 2010-08-01.

4) Student.TREFNO

From 2010/11 the GTCE will feed back Teacher Reference Numbers (TRNs) to institutions through the HESA Aardvark system following provisional registration. The new TRNs will be automatically added to the HESA ITT return and record contacts will be notified by email when they are available to download and incorporate into local systems. This function will be available through the Aardvark submit site under the 'What can I do now?' section. The TRNs will be available to download in XML and fixed length format that contains:

TREFNO_DATE will record the date at which the TRN was received by HESA. This will enable institutions to identify the TRNs which need to be downloaded.

Relationship with the Student Record

Although this collection contains a subset of records that will be included in the subsequent summer's Student Record, this collection is entirely separate from the HESA Student Record.

There are a number of fields that exist on both the ITT In-Year Record and the Student Record and these can be viewed by following this link. Where appropriate, institutions should ensure that there is consistency of reporting across the records within these fields. For example, the value within Student.COURSEID in the ITT In-Year Record should be the same as the value returned within Course.COURSEID in the Student Record.

It is critically important that the HUSID and the NUMHUS remain the same for a student returned on both the ITT In-Year Record and the Student Record to allow record linkage.

Data collection

1) User accounts

The system has 4 different user accounts:

• Initial Registration: used for initial registration to the C10053 collection and does not provide access to any functionality of the ITT system
• Submission user: ability to submit, delete and commit data
• Approval (GTCE) user: has the authority to approve individual records for transmission
• Approval (TDA) user: has the authority to approve data for transmission to the TDA

All users must add the initial registration access code in order to access any part of the system. Users may then add one, two, or all of the remaining access codes depending on whether they have been given the authority to review and approve transmissions by the institution/record contact.

2) Access and PIN codes

To submit C10053 ITT In-year Record data to the HESA Data Collection System (known as "Aardvark") users require an access and PIN code. These codes allow users to create new accounts and/or add permissions to existing accounts. The PIN code will be distributed by letter a few days in advance of the Access Codes that will continue to be distributed by email. Both the Access Code emails and the PIN letters are sent to the nominated ITT Record contact at institutions. It is imperative that any changes to contact details are notified to HESA immediately by contacting Institutional Liaison.

For assistance with registering for the data collection system please view the Registration help guide.

3) Excluding students from transactions

Since 2009/10 there has been greater functionality with regard to excluding students from the TDA and/or GTCE transactions. Previously in 2008/09 exclusion of students who withdrew, transferred, or were returned in mistake, was only possible through setting the TTCID field to 0. Whilst this mechanism is still available to users who wish to stop students being incorrectly transferred to TDA, there is also now the option to exclude students without amending data.

Within the ‘Review of Total Institution records' screen on the Aardvark data collection system, there is a a drop-down box alongside each student submitted to the system. The options will allow you to exclude the individual student from transmission to either of TDA or GTCE, or both.

4) TEST_COMMIT to TDA facility

In C10053 users have the ability to TEST COMMIT data to the TDA. This option is available to HEI approval (TDA) users and the transaction will:

• Sets a flag to indicate that data can now go to TDA as a ‘TEST COMMIT'. This flag is reset after any further submission of data.
• Institution's can TEST COMMIT again after sending revised/amended data submissions and regardless of TDA resetting the flag.

The test commit function will be available until 15 October 2010.

The test commit issues encountered in 2009/10 have now been resolved and the system is fully functional.

File structure and format

Institutions are reminded the C10053 ITT In-Year Record data needs to be returned in XML format. 

The physical file structure to be returned to HESA is based on the data model. Further technical information is available at Technical formats.

Who to contact during the data collection

If you have any queries on the issues raised in this Circular, please contact the Institutional Liaison team at HESA, or email (liaison@hesa.ac.uk).

Yours sincerely

C. Jane Wild
Director of Operations