07/03 - July

Dear Colleagues

2006/07 HESA STUDENT RECORD COLLECTION (REF: C06011)

This Circular contains links to documents and further guidance that are required for the C05011 data collection. Institutions should review the information contained in the following documents:

Key deadlines

Note that institutions are required to send complete data that has passed first stage validation to HESA by 15 September 2007, and that last submission of files must be made by 31 October 2007 – also the date the collection is to be signed-off.

Previously announced changes to the Student Record for 2006/07

Institutions should ensure that they refer to the most recent version of the appropriate coding manual. Institutions have previously been advised of all changes to the relevant coding manual and these are also listed in the coding manual history zone.

Further Guidance

1) Research degree qualification rates for institutions in England

As part of their web-facility, HEFCE will be generating research degree qualification rates (RDQRs), which it is intended to publish during 2008. Institutions will be required to sign-off these rates as suitable for publication before signing-off their C06011 Student Record. Therefore institutions will need to submit their HESA Student Record to HEFCE's web-facility in order to check the RDQRs that HEFCE intend to publish.

2) Cost Centres, revised guidance for franchised out students

Where a part of the programme of study is taught other than by the reporting institution, expenditure related to this provision must be included against academic cost centres under Head 1 of Table 6 of the finance record. It has been agreed that the cost centres used on the Student Record should match this allocation, i.e. institutions should normally code cost centre according to the organising department at their institution. However, where the franchised out activity would constitute more than 20% of the organising department’s student FTE, and the activity does not fit within the same cost centre as the organising department, then the activity and associated expenditure should be reported against the cost centre that most closely matches the academic content of the franchised out provision. Code 99 ‘Cost centre not assignable’ should be used only in cases where it is not possible to allocate the activity to an academic cost centre e.g. where the appropriate cost centre is a non-academic cost centre. For institutions in England, HEFCE intend to make use of cost centres in their funding allocations. As such HEFCE have indicated that provision returned under code 99 ‘Cost centre not assignable’ will be allocated to the lowest price group for funding.

3) TDA Performance Profiles

The TDA have produced a useful guide to the process for validating and signing-off performance profiles data for publication. This document, entitled 'TDA Performance profiles data management system - user guide', will be available from the TDA website on 1 August (http.//dataprovision.tda.gov.uk/datacollection).

The advice below concerning late award of QTS and also the DATELEFT field is extracted from this document.

Award of QTS and Field 35 Date left institution or completed the programme of study DATELEFT
In previous collections Field 35 DATELEFT has been completed with a date when the student successfully gains the QTS award, this is no longer acceptable. To maintain the integrity of the record the date returned in DATELEFT should be the date of completing the programme and not the date of award.
Note that the Coding Manual states: “For the purpose of HESA returns, completing a programme of study is defined as being the point at which the taught or structured part of the programme of study, including any formal writing-up period, is completed i.e. once the student is no longer actively following the programme of study, and not any later stage such as, for example, final confirmation of award. This may mean that field 33, Reason for leaving, is completed using code 98 ‘Completion of course - result unknown’”.
Late award of QTS
Last year providers were given the opportunity to update their student records with late awards via the Fixed database; this will no longer be possible. All awards will now have to be returned in the main data collection (1 August 2007 – 31 October 2007). Trainees who obtain a successful award up until 1 November will be counted in the profiles publication, award dates after this date will be picked up in the following year.

Data Collection

1) Early system

The Early system, which opened on 25 May 2007, provides an opportunity for institutions to expose their student data to the full range of validation and exception checks before the data collection system opens. The Early system has been implemented solely to help institutions identify problems in their data at an early stage. Institutions are encouraged to make use of this facility. Data submitted to the system will not be retained by HESA or forwarded to statutory customers. The Early system will close on 20 July 2007 in order to enable the main system to go live in early August.

2)Test_Commit facility

This facility allows institutions to process a transaction, which if successful will generate commit stage reports for scrutiny. However, these reports are for institutions’ purposes only and will not be checked within HESA.

Following a successful test_commit, institutions do not have to contact HESA to ‘decommit’ data; changes can be made to the submission by inserting and/or deleting files in the normal way. If no changes are required institutions can process a commit transaction which will then generate the same commit reports as are produced following the test commit, however these reports will be checked by HESA and any data quality issues fed back to institutions.

Note that:
· Institutions do not have to process a test_commit; the facility is optional.
· Institutions must however process a commit transaction by 21 September 2007 as detailed in the Timescales for the Collection.

3)HIN Processing

Institutions have been forewarned of the need for data quality improvements in relation to HIN linking in 2006/07 onwards (ref. Circulars 06/06 and 07/01, issued October 2006 and February 2007 respectively).

A new status of COMMIT passed but HIN failed is thus being introduced for the 2006/07 Student Record data collection. If there are any errors in HIN checks 6 and 7, then the status of the transaction that would otherwise have passed COMMIT level checks will be COMMIT passed but HIN failed. Check documentation and all other reports resulting from a successful COMMIT transaction will be produced when an outcome of COMMIT passed but HIN failed is generated. Institutions will need to resolve HIN errors and resubmit data to produce a successful COMMIT. Submissions can also be set to COMMIT by Institutional Liaison once errors are resolved. A summary of this procedure is shown below.

Possible outcomes of COMMIT transaction

Exception	HIN	Result	Status
Passed	Passed	Passed	Committed
Passed	Failed	Failed	Commit passed but HIN failed
Failed	Passed	Failed	Valid data - Commit failed
Failed	Failed	Failed	Valid data - Commit failed

4) Updated sign-off procedures

A revised procedure has been put in place for the completion of sign-off slips. This procedure is designed to increase awareness of the importance of the verification stage as an integral part of making the return.

It is required that the sign-off slip for this return is completed by the Head of the reporting institution, or by a person with suitable authority. To assist in this process, once HESA has reviewed submitted data, and this data has been deemed credible, an automated email will be sent to the Head of the institution. The sign-off slip will be attached to this email.

The deadline for completion and return of the Student Record sign-off slip is 31 October 2007.

Post-collection amendments to HESA return (Fixed database)

From 2004/05 onwards exceptional amendments previously handled by the appropriate Funding Council are being collected via HESA. This Fixed database process is separate from the main data collection and will only be available to an institution on the explicit instruction of the appropriate statutory customer, e.g. Funding Council. Furthermore, statutory customers will only approve specific changes to the collection and so institutions will need to get approval for every field they wish to change. Institutions should also be aware that onward use of information, for example in HESA publications, or for TQI, will be based on the original data collected and not on any amended data.

The agreements with statutory customers provide for the costs of processing such exceptional amendments through the Fixed database to be recovered from institutions by HESA, with assistance from the appropriate Funding Council. It has been agreed that for the Student Record this charge should be set at 20% of the institution's annual subscription.

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