CEOs Report 26 May 2011

CEO's Report for HESA Board

Thursday 26 May 2011, HESA, 95 Promenade, Cheltenham

1. Update on current developments

HE Information Landscape and information flows

The set of diagrams attached to this report have now been widely discussed with BIS, all the funding councils, UCAS, SLC, sector representatives (Planners, IT Directors and system suppliers. They embody the vision of a different and better way of collecting student data directly from higher education providers, which would service a greater number of needs and thus reduce burden. The HE Better Regulation Group are keen to see a feasibility and impact study carried out, and at the same time UCAS and SLC both have major system regeneration plans and are keen to meet with HESA to take this forward. A meeting of the three Chief Executives is planned in June, with the expectation that we can agree to launch a shared programme of work.

The proposal has been considered in BIS and presented to David Willetts as a means of reducing burden.We have also attended a meeting with the Minister and a follow-up meeting with his advisor and other BIS staff (together with UCAS, SLC and HEFCE) to consider information transparency and tracking students into and through the sector using linked data. There is likely to be reference to access to data and provision of information (including information to inform students) in the White Paper.

BIS has recently (with a deadline of 48 hours) required a detailed analysis of our data collections, together with estimates of resources, any plans to make changes and the governance arrangements to manage data collection activities. This was in the context of a full BIS return for Treasury scrutiny. The assumption was that this would include BIS data collections and those of its ALBs, therefore HEFCE and SLC also had to respond. We pointed out we were not an ALB but without a response from us both BIS and HEFCE had only a partial story to tell. We await any outcome, although the questions following the first BIS Challenge Panel meeting with the Treasury were about the extent to which BIS had clear governance across all its data collections and how it had (since May 2010) or intended to reduce burden. We provided a short description of the “vision” as described above.

KIS Feasibility

The new QAA review methodology places more emphasis on the provision of public information and the development of the Key Information Set (KIS) is now underway following a joint HEFCE, UUK, GuildHE consultation at the end of 2010. The KIS will be compulsory in England and Northern Ireland; it is anticipated that Scottish institutions will be able to subscribe to the KIS process on a voluntary basis. HEFCW have recently undertaken a consultation with Welsh HEIs regarding the introduction of KIS by September 2012. HEFCW are also proposing the inclusion of an additional question on student union effectiveness in the National Student Survey.

The KIS will require a new data collection to be developed in order to capture the information that is not currently collected and the Agency is working with HEFCE to develop a specification for this new record. It is anticipated that the first full KIS collection will be run by HEFCE in 2012 and the process will be transferred to HESA for 2013. The issue of resourcing this, at both the initial project stage and in the longer term, is being considered by HEFCE.

Private Providers

The Agency has published the first set of data from the survey of private and for-profit providers of HE. This small survey picks up on some of the issues and recommendations set out in the UUK report on private providers, published in March 2010. The published data can be found at www.hesa.ac.uk/pp.

The survey work has established a number of contacts at private providers and a number of introductory meetings have subsequently been held. To date these meetings have focussed on those providers who are
currently, or are soon to be, subscribers to the QAA.

The plans for the Key Information Set (KIS) and the new QAA review method for England and Northern Ireland are both driving private providers towards HESA reporting. The KIS will require the submission of Student and DLHE data and the QAA review process will include the provision of public information (including the KIS) from 2012/13. In theory this could require private providers to submit 2011/12 Student records from 1 August 2012 and while it appears that some might be keen to do so, there currently appears to be some acceptance that this timescale would be unrealistic for some institutions.

Changes in the Tier4 visa process (announced by UKBA in March 2011) mean that some of the accreditation bodies used by private providers (notably the British Accreditation Council and the Accreditation Service for International Colleges) will no longer be recognised as acceptable for granting a Tier4 sponsorship licence. This is likely to result in more QAA subscribers.

We might expect something in the BIS White Paper that makes HESA reporting a condition of access to SLC loans for students and for this to be a requirement from 2013/14. At this stage we cannot tell if this might be restricted to the Student and DLHE records or if the requirement might cover all the existing HESA data streams. The level playing field principle would suggest that private providers should face the same reporting requirements as the currently publicly-funded institutions. 

Patterns Report for UUK

Following discussions with Universities UK, HESA has been appointed to undertake production of sections A and B of the annual ‘Patterns of Higher Education’ report for 2011. These sections will be published electronically for the first time this year. Section C which provides a more policy-oriented overview will be produced by UUK and will be published in printed form. This work will be funded by UUK and undertaken by HESA’s Analytical Services team for delivery in mid September.

JISC BI Project with Durham

Durham University and HESA made a successful bid under the JISC funding call for business intelligence projects at the end of 2010. The project entitled ‘Enabling Benchmarking Excellence’ aims to gather a set of metadata from a diverse sample of HEIs which will examine institutional structures and map these to HESA cost centres. In this way the project will lay the foundations for enhanced use of national datasets by relating these to individual institutional structures. This work will be complementary to the planned introduction of a new HESA collection of departments to cost centres from 2012/13. Research will be undertaken to establish the business uses of mapped data and example metrics will be generated to illustrate this. A sample set of organisational structures mapped to academic and non-academic units and to the new set of cost centres will be produced. Finally a knowledge resource will be generated covering approaches and practical issues concerned with mapping. This will be used to provide intelligence and practical guidance to support the implementation of the full HESA collection.

Data matching study

HESA and UCAS are in discussions about setting up a joint project to undertake a data matching process between the National Pupil Database, UCAS and HESA data. The intention is that such an exercise would produce a valuable new data resource tracking students from school through to leaving HE and initial destinations having completed higher education qualifications (where applicable). UCAS have extensive aspirations for this in terms of providing enhanced services to member institutions and to prospective students. Such a data resource may also prove valuable to HESA in providing enhanced information on entry routes to higher education which can be assessed alongside outcomes. Currently the project is at an early stage and no formal project documentation yet exists. HESA has made it clear to UCAS that such a project would need a formal footing and appropriate governance and that we would need to reach agreement on onward use which would be subject to some form of contract or MoU.

2. Engagement

HE Better Regulation Group

The HE Better Regulation Group (with a UK wide remit) has just published its annual report. Of particular note is the work we have undertaken with them to look at the demands for data made by PSRBs and particularly to engage with Professional Bodies. It is probably true to say that the amount of data collection streamlining that can be achieved is variable across all the professional bodies but we are keen to continue to discuss this with them. Perhaps of more significance is their interest in the prospect of reducing burden and improving quality and timeliness of data collections as described above (first paragraph). More recently we met with the Chair, Sir Graeme Catto, to discuss the prospect for reducing the burden to HEIs of supplying data to the Strategic Health Authorities, given the reforms to the NHS that are agreed or proposed. He has agreed to set up a meeting with the current Managing Director of Medical Education England looking forward to the prospect of Health Education England and also involving UUK, to discuss opportunities for the future.

Bench Marking for Efficiency Phase 2

Work on the benchmarking project is progressing well. The project framework was established at the beginning of the year with plan, communications plan, risk register and other standard documents. A project microsite has been established at www.benchmarking.hesa.ac.uk to introduce the project, provide progress updates for stakeholders, publicise project events and host interim deliverables from the project (final deliverables will be hosted on the JISC Infonet resource in due course). The project team has been working hard to establish communications with other relevant initiatives and activities in the sector to ensure coordination and reduce scope for duplication of effort. These have included UUK on their Efficiency and Modernisation project (the Task Group for which is providing governance to the HESA project), the HEFCE LGM Committee, JISC through their Business Intelligence workstream, AMHEC (‘Association of Managers of HE Colleges’, who are undertaking a benchmarking project for a small group of specialist institutions), GuildHE, SROC, UCISA, National Planners Group, the Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA), SUMS Consulting, AUA (through their Change Management group) and UCAS among others.

The project has been represented and publicised at a number of existing sector conferences and seminars this year. In addition a number of project specific events have been established. The first which looked at establishing the business requirements for benchmarking was run on 1 March. An event on identifying good practice in benchmarking took place on 16 May. Further events include one targeted at GuildHE and specialist institutions on 7 June, Process Benchmarking on 24 June and International Benchmarking on 20 July. One further event to mark the end of the main project phase, to present the deliverables and publicise what has been achieved is under consideration for the autumn.

PA Consulting has been commissioned to undertake a study into international benchmarking, by establishing sector requirements, assessing current activity, establishing a map of suitable international data resources and proposing a practical model for enhanced international benchmarking.

Finally, heidi developments are being scheduled in order to improve this as a key benchmarking resource, including the generation of an Application Programming Interface (API) to enable heidi to be integrated into HEI BI systems.

heidi

heidi 4.0 went live at 8am on Monday 7 March and introduced a wealth of new features, including:-

• A new user interface
• Improved system navigation
• Re-designed report designer
• New charts - scatter chart and distribution chart
• New derived fields and aggregate rows, including percentage change

In addition to the new functionality, the following data has been added as part of the heidi 4.0 release:-

• 2004/05 to 2008/09 Estates Management Statistics data and ratios
• Re-developed 2004/05 to 2009/10 HESA staff data, allowing more fields to be analysed against each other

Four half day heidi 4 conversion seminars have taken place since heidi 4 was released (two in London and two in Scotland). Feedback from these sessions and from users in general has been very positive and the move to version 4 has been well-received.

Currently 87% of HESA member institutions are subscribers to heidi and we are in active discussions with a few of the remaining (small and specialist) institutions who are not yet subscribers. The delivery of EMS data through heidi to non-subscribing HEIs may prove a useful mechanism to demonstrate the system and encourage further increases in take-up.

The development model for the next 18 months, agreed with heidi's User and Advisory groups, is to have multiple smaller releases roughly every 3-6 months. Current plans are for releases as follows:-

• December 2011 - Re-developed 2004/05 to 2009/10 HESA Student data, allowing more fields to be analysed against each other
• April 2012 - Improvements to aid benchmarking - sharing of reports, new chart types and an API that enables integration with BI systems
• August 2012 - Further user interface improvements
• December 2012 - Further enhancements yet to be determined
• The final service charge to Leeds University and the ending of LGM funding conditions in 2012 will mark the point at which a review of governance and management arrangements as was planned from the inception of the project. This review was discussed at the last Heidi Advisory Group meeting in March. It was agreed that a small review group will be established and commence work in October with the aim of reporting to the March 2012 meeting of the Advisory Group. A senior independent representative from an HE institution will be asked to chair the review group. The recommendations from the review will be reported to the May 2012 meeting of the HESA Board.

Training update

The 2010/11 training programme opened in August 2010 with 30 seminars scheduled through the year but was soon expanded to 37, in response to demand for training across the various datastreams. The programme has included training on the Student, Staff, DLHE records and {the new} EMS return, as well as interactive training for heidi and for the data collection system, together with a specialist postgraduate seminar. The delegate feedback for the seminars completed thus far has continued to be encouraging, with 97% of all delegates evaluating the respective events as being 'excellent' or 'good'. Comprised of 37 seminars and 20 institutional visits, the 2010/11 training programme has attracted 1407 delegate bookings to date - the programme will be completed at the end of July. Once again this level of participation represents an increase in bookings on the previous year. In order to better support delivery of this level of activity, a Trainer was appointed and commenced work on 6 May.

Learning Records Service (previously MIAP) HESA Pilot – Stage 2

Background:
This pilot investigation researched some data management issues relevant to the adoption of the Learning Records Service (LRS) by the HE sector. The work has been supported jointly by HEFCE and JISC and is one of nine pilots conducted by seven HEIs and two sector agencies to look at different aspects of embedding the Unique Learner Number (ULN) and Personal Learning Record (PLR) within HE business processes.

HESA pilot - Phase 1
Phase 1 of the HESA pilot tracked the movement of learner data into, through and out of the HE sector. The exercise involved desktop review plus interaction with data subjects and both source and destination organisations. This work (Data Tracking Project) was completed and reported upon in Autumn 2010.

HESA pilot -Phase 2
Phase 2 of the HESA pilot is comprised of two strands; one strand, relating to an original proposal, looks at data flows for managing events and mobility during the HE student lifecycle. A second strand, an {additional} related piece of work, looked to represent the current (and changing) HE Information Landscape in England in a series of diagrams. These diagrams have subsequently been shared with statutory customers together with a number of other sector stakeholders. The timetable for this additional component of the pilot was driven largely by the changing times we find ourselves in, more particularly, the current BIS agenda.Consequently, work on the first strand of Phase 2 of the pilot was delayed, although this first strand has now recently been completed. The outcome of this strand of work is again predominantly pictorial; a further three diagrams have been produced which show the range of student identifiers that are currently used in the education sector, those carried by students that are currently collected by HE providers, and the many identifiers involved when students currently move within the education sector.

The aim of both phases of the LRS HESA Pilot was to identify potential rationalisation that could lead to
efficiencies and improvements in data management within the sector.

GTCE/TDA Contract termination

The abolition of the General Teaching Council for England is due to take effect from 31 March 2012 and the TDA is due to become an executive agency of DFE at a similar time. We understand that a new agency will be created to take on some of the responsibilities and functions currently held by the GTCE and the TDA. At this stage it is not clear if the register of qualified teachers will be maintained by the new agency and therefore whether the current HESA ITT Record will be required after March 2012.

Collection of data about HE students in FE colleges and FE students in HE institutions

When HESA was created in 1993, there was an agreement to define data collection responsibilities by type of institution rather than type of provision. 36 English HEIs have FE students. Over the years, a number of these institutions have found it beneficial to report their FE students directly to the FE funding bodies (variously FEFC, LSC, SFA, YPLA). The YPLA is now pushing all HE institutions that it funds to return student data directly to them and it is anticipated that these students will no longer be reported through HESA. Andy Youell, Director of Standards and Development is attending a meeting in relation to this and will provide any update at Board as appropriate.

Competition Law

Following the changes to the HE landscape and the prospect of the introduction of competition within the HE sector the Competition Act has become an important issue. Given that data collection and dissemination is central to HESA’s business we are taking specialist legal advice to avoid infringement of the Act and to enable HESA to maximise the data it is able to publish. To ensure HESA obtains top quality and practical advice whilst keeping costs down HESA has taken advantage of the Bar Council’s Direct Access Scheme and is taking advice in conference from Daniel Beard QC. HESA is also taking part in discussions with Universities UK and HEFCE regarding the effect of the Competition Act on the sector. Our conference with Counsel is scheduled to take place in June.

3. Record Reviews

Staff Record

Board has previously been informed that proposals for change to the Staff Record would be presented to this meeting. However, due to the number of issues to address, additional meetings needed to be held and the process has been delayed by a couple of months. The Staff review group has been meeting through the winter and spring and a sector consultation will have been launched before the Board meeting. Following consultation, proposals will be presented to Board in September.

Finance Statistics Return with HE - Business and Community Interaction Survey (FSR with HE-BCI)

Discussions are currently underway in relation to the future of the Finance Statistics return. Internal discussions have taken place about problems identified during the collection and potential solutions, in particular with timescales. A subsequent meeting is being held on Monday 13 June at HEFCE with relevant HEFCE and HESA colleagues. Andrew McConnell, Chair of BUFDG has also been involved in the initial discussions and will be present at this meeting. Any agreed outcomes from this meeting will inform the future review of this collection.

Early Destinations of Leavers from HE (EDLHE)

Recommendations from the fundamental review of the EDLHE Survey were presented to Board in December and Board has been kept informed of further progress since then. The survey specification has now been finalized and publication of documentation setting out the changes will have been published by the time of the Board meeting.

Section E has been finalised following discussion with HEFCE and BIS. It has been agreed that three questions relation to employment, study and self-employment should be included and the resulting data assessed for robustness before a decision is made about publication.

Estates Management Statistics (EMS)

Following completion of the first round of HESA EMS data collection, a review of the content of the record has just been launched. Planning is in early stages and it is acknowledged that there is a significant number of issues to be addressed as part of the review. Board will be kept informed of progress of the review which will continue over the remainder of the year.

Cost Centre Review

See separate Agenda item HESA/11/01/07.

4. Update on current Data collection

The final data collection for the 2009/10 reporting period, DLHE, closed as planned on Friday 13 May with delivery of the Collection Database to be made to Statutory Customers by 1 June 2011.

The Winter collections this year included the EMS return for the first time; this collection was previously made by HEFCE through a contractor. Of 165 reporting HEIs in 2009/10 only 5 took up the option of making a 'Nil' return, all of these being institutions in Scotland where the collection is optional. The EMS Collection Database was delivered to Statutory Customers on the date agreed (31 March). The FSR with HE-BCI Survey Collection Database was delivered to Statutory Customers a week earlier than scheduled (on 3 February).

Looking to the 2010/11 reporting period, the early systems for the Staff and Student Records have been released to HEIs. The Campus information collection system opened to Institutions as scheduled on 16 May. During Spring there is a large amount of preparation work undertaken in readiness for the suite of summer data collections namely the Student, Aggregate Offshore, Staff and ITT records.

The field work for the Longitudinal DLHE survey of 2006/07 leavers has been completed and the data delivered to HESA by the survey contractors IFF Research. The resulting dataset will be delivered to Statutory Customers at the end of May; HESA will publish a report based on the data in early September. Almost 50,000 responses to the survey have been received.

Alison Allden
Chief Executive