01/01 - May
Dear Colleagues
Student Record Specification Changes - 2001/02 and 2002/03
This Circular confirms the agreed changes for the 2001/02 student record and invites institutions to comment on changes proposed for 2002/03. There are three main sections:
· Confirmation of ethnicity codes for 2001/02
· Confirmation of reduced number of fields required for the December data collection from 2001/02 (C01011A) onwards
· Invitation to institutions to comment on proposed changes for 2002/03.
Included within the section on proposed changes for 2002/03 specific reference is made to:
· the use of UCAS data in making HESA returns
· possible arrangements for data transfer from HESA to the Department of Health/National Health Service.
CONFIRMATION OF ETHNICITY CODES FOR 2001/02
Changes to the 2001/02 student record were confirmed to institutions following consultation; details and replacement pages were issued in November 2000 with Circular 00/03. The specification of the 2001/02 student record coding manual changes is also available on the HESA website at http://www.hesa.ac.uk/Manuals/srcm200102.htm.
In Circular 00/03 it was mentioned that there was a possibility that the ethnicity categories for field 14 could still change. This was because these follow the census categories that had not at that stage been confirmed for the 2001 census. However in the event no late changes to the census ethnicity categories were made on a UK-wide basis, so this Circular confirms the 2001/02 ethnicity codes to be used as being consistent with the replacement pages issued earlier, i.e.
10 White (Code only available if COMDATE <01/08/2001).
11 White - British.
12 White - Irish.
19 Other White background.
21 Black or Black British - Caribbean.
22 Black or Black British - African.
29 Other Black background.
31 Asian or Asian British - Indian.
32 Asian or Asian British - Pakistani.
33 Asian or Asian British - Bangladeshi.
34 Chinese or Other Ethnic background - Chinese.
39 Other Asian background.
41 Mixed - White and Black Caribbean.
42 Mixed - White and Black African.
43 Mixed - White and Asian.
49 Other Mixed background.
80 Other Ethnic background.
90 Not known.
98 Information refused.
REDUCED NUMBER OF FIELDS REQUIRED FOR THE DECEMBER DATA COLLECTION FROM 2001/02 (C01011A)
Following the work undertaken by PA Consulting for the HEFCE Accountability Review, the HESA Statutory Business Committee agreed that the future of the HESA December return should be considered by the team undertaking the National Statistics Quality Review of HE (student) statistics, making reference to Statutory Customers' operational requirements for the December return.
The Quality Review team have therefore discussed Autumn statistics generally with funding councils, education departments and users of National Statistics.
The Quality Review team concluded that funding council data cannot be used as a basis for consistent, stable and detailed early statistics and that the data therefore needs to be collected separately from the funding operations.
The detailed requirements of users fall short of the data that is currently specified within the December return, but are extensive enough to make their collection in an aggregate return unnecessarily complex.
The recommendation of the Quality Review team, agreed by the HESA Statutory Business Committee is that:
· The HESA December return is retained though with a reduced set of fields that match the stated requirements.
Agreed changes to 2001/02 (C01011A) and subsequent December collections
HESA has accordingly amended the fields that are required within the student return for the 2001/02 and subsequent December collections. A full list of the December fields is given below, a reduction of 19 fields.
Please note that the file structure of the return will not change - the only change in processing will be that HESA will not validate or load any fields other than those listed. Therefore institutions do not need to change the software that generates the December file unless they wish to do so.
<h4>No. Name Abbreviation </h4> 001 Record type indicator RECID 002 HESA institution identifier INSTID 003 Campus identifier CAMPID 004 Student identifier HUSID 006 FE student marker FESTUMK 007 Family name SURNAME 008 Forenames FNAMES 010 Date of birth BIRTHDTE 011 Gender GENDER 012 Domicile DOMICILE 014 Ethnicity ETHNIC 016 Disability DISABLE 017 Additional support band ADSPBAND 021 Highest qualification on entry... QUALENT2 023 A/AS level points score ALEVPTS 024 Highers points score HIGHPTS 025 Occupation code OCCCODE 026 Date of commencement of programme COMDATE 027 New entrant to HE ENTRYCDE 028 Special students SPCSTU 030 Year of student on this programme YEARSTU 035 Date left institution ... DATELEFT 040 Programme of study title PTITLE 041 General qualification aim ... QUALAIM 042 FE general qualification aim ... FEQAIM 043 Subject(s) of qualification aim... SBJQA1 044 Subject of qualification aim ... SBJQA2 045 Subject of qualification aim ... SBJQA3 046 Proportion indicator SBJBID 049 Expected length of study programme SPLENGTH 050 Units of length UNITLGTH 053 Teacher training course identifier TTCID 054 ITT phase/scope ITTPHSC 064 Major source of funding MSFUND 065 Fundability code FUNDCODE 066 Fee eligibility FEEELIG 068 Major source of tuition fees MSTUFEE 070 Mode of study MODE 071 Location of study LOCSDY 072 Year of programme YEARPRG 075 Postcode POSTCODE 078 Religion RELIG 083 Amount of tuition fees received. RECFEE 084 Reason for non-payment ... NONPAY 085 Guided learning hours GLHRS 148/133 UCAS Number UCASNUM 149/134 Institution's own student id OWNSTU 150/135 Institution's own programme id ... OWNPSD 157/142 A and AS levels ALEVELS 158/143 SCE Highers and CSYS HIGHERS
PROPOSED CHANGES FOR 2002/03
These proposals follow from an initial consultation with institutions in Summer 2000 (reference Circular 00/01, Annex B). The changes proposed for 2002/03 are contained in 'Annex B_Version 2' issued with this Circular. Institutions are invited to comment on these proposals. Please address your comments, which are to be received by Friday 17 August, to Alison Berry, in Institutional Liaison at HESA.
HESA and its Statutory Customers will then consider all comments received and present final proposals for approval at the HESA Board meeting to be held in September. Institutions will receive confirmation of the final changes for 2002/03 in October 2001. It is intended that subsequently there will be a complete update of the Student Record Coding Manual for 2002/03. This new version will incorporate these 2002/03 changes and also allow for revision of terminology where required, e.g. SOEID to SE, Scottish Executive.
Use of UCAS data in making HESA returns 2002/03 onwards
As announced in Report 01/02, published by HEFCE in January, UCAS, HESA and the funding councils, in consultation with government education departments, have agreed an implementation plan designed to improve the links between data captured by UCAS and data that institutions provide to HESA.
This implementation plan includes a commitment by UCAS to work towards the introduction of the new HERCULES admissions system that will include a user-friendly facility which will enable institutions to download appropriate data relating to all the 2002/03 HESA fields for which data from specified applicants has originally been collected by UCAS. This information will be pre-processed from the UCAS sources that most closely match HESA definitions and presented in exactly the same format as required for the 2002/03 HESA record, for use in preparing HESA returns for entrants in the 2002/03 academic year onwards. The introduction of many of the 2002/03 student record changes is dependent on this information being made readily available to institutions by UCAS, hence this early assurance made by UCAS to assist in reducing the administrative burden on institutions.
Further details about HERCULES and the procedure for downloading the data required by HESA will be available in due course from UCAS. UCAS and HESA will also make available descriptions of the processing checks applied to this data by UCAS.
It is also the intention in 2002/03 that UCAS will make similar information available for the entire UCAS entrant population, thus including students entering through the Graduate Teacher Training Registry (GTTR), the Nursing and Midwifery Admissions Service (NMAS) and the Social Work Admission System (SWAS).
In addition, it is hoped that a standard method of calculating pre-entry qualifications tariff will be developed for 2002/03, and when this is available, UCAS and HESA will publish the algorithm used to calculate this on their respective websites.
It is planned that subsequently the relevant systems can be maintained in unison as the UCAS application form and/or the HESA records evolve over time.
Possible arrangements for data transfer from HESA to Department of Health/National Health Service
As a result of a recommendation in the report "A Health Service of all the talents: Developing the NHS workforce" the Department of Health is currently undertaking a Review of Workforce Information to establish what information is both already available or necessary to assist in planning the healthcare workforce. The Department of Health and NHS organisations (DH/NHS) have been aware of the existence of the HESA datasets but have not traditionally used these a great deal.
Information on students training in healthcare and social work professions is crucial to support the DH/NHS workforce planning process. To maximise the use of available information from HESA and also to prevent the duplication of requests to HEIs the DH/NHS is considering the existing HESA data set and also any further information that it might require.
Discussions between HESA and DH/NHS are ongoing and the DH/NHS was therefore recently invited to contribute to re-development of the student record. It is hoped that, for relevant information gathering, this partnership will rationalise data collection across organisations so that overlap between the data collected can be minimized. Thus the DH/NHS have suggested certain requirements of the HESA Individualised Student Record for 2002/03 which are detailed in the Annex to this Circular.
Institutions with medical, dental, nursing, allied health professions, or social work students are invited to contribute to the discussion of the best means of meeting these requirements, initially through contributing to this consultation. If appropriate, there will be further consultation with the sector as DH/NHS information requirements become clearer.
It is hoped that by the close of the consultation process, progress will have been made which will enable data transfer from HESA to DH/NHS and so reduce the overall burden on HE institutions. However if such progress has not been made, HESA would not be in a position to implement specific changes to the HESA Individualised Student Record in 2002/03 to meet DH/NHS requirements.
FURTHER INFORMATION
If you have any queries on the issues raised in this Circular, please contact the Institutional Liaison team (Helen Skitt, Alison Berry or Janet Earl) at HESA, or email (liaison@hesa.ac.uk).
Please return any comments on the proposals for the 2002/03 student record by Friday 17 August.
Yours sincerely
C Jane Wild
Director of Operations
