04/01 - January

Dear Colleagues

CHANGES TO THE HESA STUDENT RECORD FOR 2004/05 IMPLEMENTATION – C04011

Introduction

I am writing further to Part 2 of Student Circular 03/01 (issued in April 2003) in order to confirm the details of changes to be made to the HESA Student Record for implementation in 2004/05 (C04011).

This Circular contains a summary of the revision to the structure of the HESA Student Record in 2004/05, including new fields to be incorporated into each of the component Combined, Student, Module and Reduced Records.

These amendments and the consequent revisions to the record structure are necessary due to changes in the requirements of statutory data users, particularly relating to FE provision that is being collected through the HESA Student Record and/or relating to the devolved administrations.

In respect of the former, record contacts will be aware that information about FE provision in HEIs in England is currently collected through the HESA Student Record and transferred to the LSC; just as information about HE provision in FECs in England is currently collected through the LSC Individualised Learner Record (ILR) and in part transferred to HESA. Contacts in Wales will be aware that the Lifelong Learning Wales Record (LLWR) was introduced in 2002/03. In that year the opportunity was taken to bring about better data alignment between the HESA return and both the ILR and the LLWR; the focus for the 2003/04 reporting period being to use the existing HESA record structure as a basis for making a limited number of changes.

However, having gained some ground for 2003/04, the dialogue with FE/HE data users in England and Wales continued and, as predicted, has brought about further and more extensive alignment for 2004/05. Circular 03/01 (issued in April 2003) indicated that new fields would need to be introduced in the HESA record in 2004/05 for this purpose. Such dialogue will carry on to ensure consistency across future developments of the ILR, LLWR and the HESA Student Record. Thus in this regard HESA is committed to making certain revision to its Student Record for the 2004/05 reporting period, to better meet FE data users requirements in both England and Wales.

In addition, the requirements of statutory data users in the devolved administrations have changed. For example, credit based measurement is to be introduced in Scotland from 2004/05, in Wales there is a need to report on national identity, also to identify Welsh speakers, and in Northern Ireland there is a specific need for different information to support the monitoring of equal opportunities.

This Circular therefore details the changes to the Student Record to be implemented from the 2004/05 reporting period (C04011) onwards. The more limited changes relating to all HEIs (Section 1) are separated from those relating only to HEIs with FE students in England and Wales (Sections 2 & 3), and the devolved administrations (Sections 4, 5 & 6). Each section contains changes to existing fields highlighted separately from the detail given about new fields. The revised Student Record Coding Manual for 2004/05 will be issued on the HESA WWW site in summer 2004.

Please be aware that none of the information contained in this Circular is relevant to the next HESA return (C03011), which has a reporting period of 1 August 2003 to 31 July 2004, and a due data date of 15 September 2004.

Future directions

Mindful particularly of the sequential change necessarily introduced into the Student Record in each of several years (2001/02, 2002/03, 2003/04 and 2004/05) since the last major review of this return in 1998/99, HESA is now planning future record review schedule(s), that is beyond 2004/05.

In July 1997 (ref. Student Circular 97/02) one of the issues raised in considering the structure of the {1998/99} student record was a proposal to change from a flat file to a relational structure i.e. to redesign the record into a truly normalised form. Analysis of the consultation responses at that time indicated that 65% of institutions already held their internal data in a normalised database structure and 26% were thinking of changing to do so. It is therefore likely that normalisation will be implemented following the next record development. It is also possible that some ‘housekeeping ‘ measures might need to be taken in the interim, i.e. in order to cap the number of fields included in the HESA Student Record at 255, for the convenience of institutions, for example, those heavily dependent on Microsoft Excel.

During the ongoing review of the Finance Statistics Record (FSR), the cost centre concept has been considered; in respect of its value in providing a viable link across the student, staff and finance data streams. Currently, the review group have established that although this concept remains useful, some refining of both the number and variety of cost centres is desirable. There will be more about this topic in the FSR record review consultation document to be released to HEIs shortly. However, if there is a change in the use of cost centres in the finance record, this will clearly also impact on the student and staff records.

Further Information

If you have any queries on the issues raised in this Circular, please contact the Institutional Liaison team (Alison Berry, Marietta Nkweta, Janet Earl or Clara Elcocks) at HESA, or email (liaison@hesa.ac.uk).

Yours sincerely

C. Jane Wild
Director of Operations