05/04 - October

LIKELY AREAS OF NEW REQUIREMENTS

It is intended that the second consultation of this review address issues of content, however, discussions with Statutory Customers have identified a number of areas of likely new requirements and it was thought useful to provide pointers at this stage. Comments are welcomed on any of the areas and issues identified below.

Extension of coverage of UCAS fields

Some of HESA’s Statutory Customers have expressed an interest in receiving data for a wider range of students in fields that are currently required to be completed for UCAS entrants only – i.e. where the data is available to institutions from UCAS via the *J transaction.

Institutions are asked to indicate the extent to which they collect and record data, such as detailed entry qualifications, directly from entrants who have not applied through UCAS. The current ‘UCAS only’ fields are as follows:

The first column of fields listed above includes two sets of personal information, the coverage of which data users would like to extend beyond just UCAS entrants. These fields relate to social background – as defined by the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) and the Standard Economic Classification (SEC) - and details of the last institution an entrant attended. At the moment SOC and SEC are coded by UCAS from information provided by applicants about their own or their parents’ occupations. SEC is generated from SOC using a standard algorithm and HESA is investigating whether this could be generated centrally by HESA if institution undertook the collection of occupation information and coding of SOC. HESA already makes available under licence software for coding of SOC, which is used by those responsible for the DLHE return. This software could also be made available to student record contacts to assist with coding.

Previous institution is also coded by UCAS, using a range of coding frames, however, once coded this information is then categorised into a limited number of groups for onward analysis. Data users have indicated that it is only this grouped data that is of interest and institutions may therefore be asked to provide coded information to indicate whether an entrant has most recently attended a UK state school, a UK private school, a UK FE college, a UK HEI, an overseas school, an overseas college or overseas HEI. Currently the record also includes a field to record the year in which an individual left this last institution. It is likely that this requirement will be dropped following the review.

HESA is also aware that UCAS is changing the format of its reference numbers. This will have consequences for the generation of HUSIDs for UCAS entrants. HESA will be looking to resolve this as part of this review and will include details of proposals in the next consultation.

The remainder of these fields relate to the collection of tariff information for qualifications on entry. Elsewhere in this consultation there are proposals to restructure and expand the range of information collected about entry qualifications and HESA is in discussions with UCAS about how this requirement might be handled for the UCAS entrants. However, as a consequence HESA proposes no longer to collect tariff score information, thus there could be no requirement on institutions to calculate these for non-UCAS entrants. However, data users would find it useful to have the detailed information about entry qualifications from a wider range of entrants and as such, these tariff fields will be replaced with an increased requirement to provide details of individual qualifications held by all entrants.

HEFCE funding

HEFCE will shortly be consulting on changes to their teaching funding method and expect to confirm final decisions during spring 2006. It is unlikely that HEFCE will confirm its funding decisions prior to the final consultation on proposals for the HESA student record. However, HESA will ensure any changes to the HESA student record required as a result of changes to the HEFCE funding are incorporated into the new record for 2007-08.

Internal departments

Currently within the HESA record students are allocated to subject areas and student FTEs across cost centres. Both of these classifications are centrally designed and intended to allow comparable data to be generated across institutions.

For a number of both practical and analytical reasons it is now being proposed that, in addition, HESA includes in its record a field allowing institutions to allocate students to the departments in their own internal structures. It is intended that this would assist institutions to improve data quality by looking during data collection at reports that match local analyses and disaggregation. Additional collection of such a field might allow production of some data reports based on this classification – though such reports would not allow cross institution comparisons.

Term-time postcodes

Currently HESA collects only one postcode on the student record – that of the student immediately prior to entry to their programme. HESA would not expect this postcode to change in succeeding years unless the institution was correcting an earlier error. This requirement for a postcode prior to entry will remain in the reviewed record. In addition, data users have indicated a requirement for collection of a term-time postcode for all students. This is intended to facilitate analysis of ‘travel to study’ patterns, and also feed into population estimates for areas surrounding institutions.

Implications of MIAP

The Management Information Across Partners (MIAP) programme is intended to bring coherence to data collection across all post-16 education. Among a number of strands of the programme are two that will have an impact on the student record. The MIAP programme has undertaken several studies into the practical issues concerning the development of a Unique Learner Number (ULN) to be issued for use in all post-16 education. It is likely that in the medium term this number will replace the HUSID in the HESA student record, although it may be necessary to run the two in parallel for a number of years as the ULN is phased in.

Similarly, the develpoment of the UK Register of Learning Providers (UKRLP) will mean that institution identifiers will change to a standard set, although again it is possible that these new identifiers will run in parallel with HESA INSTIDs for a time.

Another strand of MIAP is the development of common data definitions for use across post-16 education. Benefits of implementing a common set of definitions for use in the sector will be improvements to data collection, sharing and consolidation. Introducing common data definitions to the returns made to government departments and agencies will reduce complexity and bureaucracy, increase data quality, and improve the understanding of the sector. To date development work has been done on a range of data related to individuals – reference data, sensitive data and contact data. Work is now underway on definitions more specific to education. As a stakeholder in the MIAP programme, HESA will be looking to implement the agreed Common Data Definitions (CDD) in its records. This is likely to impact on coding of basic fields, such as gender, as well on more education-specific items.

The Common Data Definitions strand of the MIAP project is currently considering the specification of a character set that properly represents appropriate non-English characters in names. The record review will look to adopt the standards defined as a result of this MIAP work.

Fees and bursaries

The DfES and Welsh Assembly Government are looking at ways of collecting data on tuition fees paid by full-time undergraduate students and the bursaries paid to full-time undergraduate students and are proposing that this information could be collected through the student record. We would welcome feedback on the proposal and whether there would be any particular difficulties in providing the following information:

• Fees paid by student (£)
• Bursaries paid to student (£)

Only cash payments are required, though it is acknowledged that bursaries are also paid in ways other than cash.

Where it would be difficult to return this information, it would be helpful to know what information could be collected.

The DfES and Welsh Assembly Government are also interested in the fees paid by part-time and postgraduate students and are similarly proposing that this information could be collected through the student record. Feedback would be welcomed on this proposal and on whether there would be any particular difficulties in providing the information.

Retention rates of part-time students

DfES/HEFCE are looking at ways of collecting data on the achievement and retention of part-time students; Welsh institutions already collect information on module completion rates and this is published in the Performance Indicators tables every year. It would be helpful to know whether similar information could be made available for English institutions and how difficult it would be to return this information as part of the student record.

Parental education

HESA is currently in discussion with its statutory customers about requirements for collection of information about parental education. A number of organisations already ask for this information from students and HESA is assessing the most appropriate methodology for a UK-wide regular collection of data.

Second consultation

Proposals for these and other areas of content for the new record will be set out in detail in the second consultation. Feedback on these broad topics at this stage will assist in the formulation of the detailed proposals.