02/03 - October

Dear Colleague

SUBJECT AREAS AND RELATED ISSUES

Summary

This Circular, concerning the presentation of information by Subject Area in HESA publications, is being sent to HEIs that return data to HESA, and to a number of subject associations and other bodies likely to have an interest in what is proposed. Its purpose is both to provide information about issues already decided, largely through the Cooke group, and also to invite comment on a number of other open issues.

Background

HESA publications currently use two types of subject-related grouping. One of these is the grouping by Cost Centres. This is used almost entirely to map the availability and use of resources. No change to it is proposed at present. The other is the grouping by Subject Areas, of which there are nineteen, and is the concern of this letter.

Subject Areas are used, for example, to display student numbers on an institutions-by-subjects basis, as in Tables 8a–8g of our annual volume Students in Higher Education Institutions. They are currently derived from the HESACODE subject descriptors, and these particular tables use the field(s) identifying the subject of qualification aim in the HESA Student Record. At the sector level, on the basis of the same field(s), a finer breakdown by subjects is also provided, as in Tables 2a–2e of the same volume.

HESA and UCAS have recently worked together to develop a common subject coding system, JACS. This was introduced for the 2002 student entry cohort, and will be the basis for HESA returns from 2002/03 onwards, with continuing students being re-coded using JACS codes rather than HESACODE. The implementation of these changes is already far advanced in institutions, and nothing in the present letter affects that.

Although JACS and HESACODE look similar and are closely related, they are not by any means identical, and it is accordingly necessary to construct Subject Area definitions afresh in terms of JACS. The need to do this also provides the opportunity to review other aspects of the way Subject Areas are used, in order to ensure that information is presented in the most meaningful way that is practicable in summary tabulations.

The change from HESACODE to JACS would of itself have entailed a review of Subject Areas, and the need for this has been anticipated for some years. However, further issues have emerged quite recently from the review of teaching quality assurance procedures, where it has been agreed that subject-based information to support QA should in future also be based on HESA Subject Areas in their new form. The group chaired by Sir Ron Cooke has taken decisions that largely determine how the new Subject Areas should be defined and used, and HESA has been authorised to resolve the remaining details in the light of consultation with interested parties.

JACS Codes

JACS is a hierarchical subject coding system. A JACS subject code consists of a letter followed by a non-zero digit and two further digits. The letter and first digit determine the subject group and the principal subject within that group, and when followed by zeros give a code covering the whole of that principal subject. Optionally, the third character may be a non-zero digit to give a greater level of refinement, and if the final digit is zero this code covers the whole of that subdivision of the principal subject. At the finest level of detail the fourth character may optionally be a non-zero digit.

Thus B100 is the principal subject Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology within the main group B: Subjects allied to Medicine. Within that, B130 is Pathology, and within that in turn B132 is Pathobiology. A digit 9 may be used at the second or third level to indicate a default or catch-all category; such codes should be used only when unavoidable. JACS codes should be used at the most detailed level which is appropriate to whatever they describe, so whilst B132 might appropriately code a module, B130 or even B100 might be more appropriate for a programme.

Some programmes cannot be described by using a single JACS subject code. Where this is because they are split programmes such as Joint Degrees, the HESA student record makes provision for each component to be coded separately. In some cases the programme may not be split, but may be too broad for any single JACS code, even at the principal subject level such as B100. To accommodate this, the JACS system has been extended solely for programme coding (in fields 43, 44, and 45 of the student record) by the introduction of codes consisting of the main group letter followed by three zeroes for a broad programme within that subject group (so B000 would be a broad programme in Subjects allied to Medicine, and of the code Y000 for a broad programme extending across more than one subject group.

In discussing aggregation into Subject Areas, it is often useful to use an abbreviated code such as B1 to cover everything whose JACS code commences with that abbreviation; these abbreviations are not themselves JACS codes, which always have four characters. HESACODEs look rather like JACS codes, but have fewer than four characters. Although JACS codes follow the pattern of HESACODEs quite closely (thus JACS B100 corresponds to HESACODE B1 Anatomy and Physiology) they are not by any means identical, and it is always important when quoting a code to make clear which system is being used.

The full specification of the JACS system may be found on the HESA website at www.hesa.ac.uk/jacs/letter.htm

Subject Areas

Under HESACODE, there are nineteen Subject Areas including a ‘Combined’ area. The Cooke group agreed to retain this overall structure but to change the content of some of the Subject Areas to align them well with JACS principal subjects, and to make some improvements in their usefulness in other respects. The table below is intended to show the overall structure of the 19 Subject Areas. The old and new versions of the Subject Areas have been matched in the natural way, with the old version in the left-hand half of the table and the new version in the right-hand half. The name is in the centre, with the definition in terms of HESACODE for the old version to the left and in terms of JACS for the new version to the right. To illustrate the effect of the changes, England First Degree numbers have been used, since these are large numbers which show the effects most clearly; the pattern for devolved administrations shows similar features. The left-most column reproduces the ‘Total England’ row of Table 8a (FT first degree students) on pp. 140–141 of Students in Higher Education Institutions 2000/01. The right-most column is a redistribution (within rounding) of the total (739020) from the left-most column incorporating the following shifts in order to simulate what the numbers would look like under the new JACS-based system; this simulation is only approximate, and exact mapping to the JACS-based system from data collected through HESACODE is not possible.

The following differences between HESACODE and JACS have an effect at the level of Subject Areas.

• HESA-L7 (Psychology without significant element of biological science) is part of JACS-C8 (Psychology) (HESACODE headcount 4915, moved from ‘HESACODE Social, economic & political studies’ to ‘JACS Biological sciences’).
• HESA-N2 (Operational Research) is JACS-G2 (HESACODE headcount 245, moved from ‘HESACODE Business & administrative studies’ to ‘JACS Mathematical sciences’).
• HESA-X8 (Management and Organisation of Education) is JACS-N224 (HESACODE headcount 660, moved from ‘HESACODE Education’ to ‘JACS Business & administrative studies’). · Veterinary Nursing numbers could not easily/reliably be identified under HESACODE, but are separated out as JACS-D3 and will be reported under ‘Agriculture and Related Subjects’ rather than ‘Veterinary Science’ in future.

Note that HESA-D45 (Food Marketing and Economics) which currently maps to HESACODE ‘Agriculture & related subjects’ becomes part of JACS-N5 and maps to JACS ‘Business & administrative studies’ but numbers cannot easily be identified for transfer in this simulation process as D45 is not a 2-character HESACODE; numbers are likely to be small.

The Cooke group agreed that the first three of these changes should be accepted, in preference to reversing them by introducing more complicated definitions of Subject Area under JACS in order to give a closer correspondence to the HESACODE definitions. The fourth change is one that has been desired for some time and is made technically feasible by the introduction of JACS.

Apportionment

The very substantial shift of numbers in the table is largely attributable to a new procedure for dealing with students on split programmes, rather than to the above changes in the way subjects are classified. Under HESACODE, the allocation algorithm attempts to associate a unit headcount figure for each student with the most appropriate Subject Area. When this is not possible, for example when a student is taking a balanced split programme across two Subject Areas, the headcount is allocated to ‘Combined’. This results in a large sector allocation to ‘Combined’ (more than 10% on the basis of the figures shown, and over 15% for the sector as a whole), and in a few institutions ‘Combined’ dominates the pattern and in consequence disaggregation by Subject Area provides little useful information.

To overcome this, a new procedure of apportionment is being introduced, and has been applied in calculating the illustrative simulated JACS figures in the table. Under apportionment, each headcount is where necessary divided in a way that in broad-brush terms reflects the pattern of a split programme. This is analogous to the use of FTE calculations, but should not be confused with them, since the splits used for apportionment are conventional rather than data-based. For split programmes not involving an ITT component, the apportionment algorithm is as follows:

• 50%:50% for a balanced two-way split;
• 67%:33% for a major/minor two-way split;
• 33%:33%:33% for a balanced three-way split.

ITT students at undergraduate level who also have a subject recorded (typically, secondary ITT students) are apportioned 50% to ‘Education’, and the remaining 50% is further apportioned according to the algorithm for non-ITT students. Where no subject other than education is recorded, or where the student is on a PGCE course, apportionment is 100% to ‘Education’. A few further special cases, affecting only small numbers of students, have also been resolved.

The move from allocation to apportionment is felt to give a much better overview of the pattern of activity by Subject Areas, and has been generally welcomed by those who have already had the opportunity to consider it.

Auxiliary Information

It has always been the case that the need to aggregate data into a relatively small number of Subject Areas has been in conflict with the desire of individual subjects to be ‘visible’ in tabulations. This will inevitably continue to be so in the future, at least in paper-based publications, for any tabulation that also involves disaggregation of sector numbers by institution.

Your views are sought on the provision of a small number of supplementary columns in institutions-by-subjects tabulations to give better information about a very few subjects which are both large in scale and in some sense inadequately represented by the subject area scheme. In addition to the specific proposals below on which comment is invited, are there in your view any other subjects that meet these criteria?

Geography comprises the two very different aspects of Physical Geography and Human and Social Geography, and under the JACS-based subject areas it is in consequence split across ‘Physical Sciences’ and ‘Social Studies’; it was similarly split under HESACODE. It is proposed to identify Geography numbers in an additional column. The numbers within ‘Social Studies’ are those under JACS-L7 (Human and Social Geography), amounting, on the same simulated basis as used earlier, to 7,120; these numbers arise from HESACODE-L8 (Geography unless solely as a physical science). It is less clear what numbers should be drawn from ‘Physical Science’. The JACS principal subject is F8 (Physical and terrestrial geographical and environmental sciences) but this includes both HESACODE-F8 (Geography studies as a science), with 7,335 students, and most of HESACODE-F9 (Environmental science and other physical sciences), with 7,720 students. HESACODE-F8 becomes JACS-F81/82/83/84/89. Do you agree that it would be useful to identify Geography numbers separately? If so, should those numbers derive from JACS-F8 and JACS-L7 (total 22,175), thus including environmental sciences, or from JACS-F81/82/83/84/89 and JACS-L7 (total 14,455), excluding environmental science at the cost of needing to rely on the accuracy of subject coding below the principal subject level?

Psychology (JACS-C8, 23,265 students), economics & politics (JACS-L1/2, 28,665 students), and English (JACS-Q3, 24,005 students), are not split across Subject Areas, but they are submerged within Subject Areas of which they are a large component with very distinct recruitment (recall that Psychology was split under HESACODE but not under JACS). In each case, do you agree that it would be useful to identify numbers separately?

Finally, there is the question of identifying initial teacher training numbers, which are not the same as ‘Education’ numbers regardless of whether HESACODE or JACS is used, and regardless of whether allocation or apportionment is used. The students concerned can be identified from the TTCID field in the student record, and in the illustrative breakdown the number of students is 25,750. Do you agree that it would be useful to show a headcount of students whose programme is designed to lead to Qualified Teacher Status?

Action Required

Your comments are invited on the specific proposals above relating to publication of institutions-by-subject tabulations, to be addressed to Matthew Ashman at HESA (matthew.ashman@hesa.ac.uk), and received by Friday 6 December.

Robin Sibson
Chief Executive, HESA
30 October 2002