This field holds the student FTE, representing the institution's best academic judgement of the full-time equivalence of the student (for this instance) during the reporting year 1 August - 31 July. The value can be recorded to one decimal place and must be between 0 and 300.

All instances where Instance.REDUCEDI = 00, 01, 02 or 03

To allow analysis by FTE, representing student load, rather than by headcount or apportioned numbers; particularly significant for analysing PT load.

Example A student studying the equivalent of a three year course over five years would be returned as 60.

A student studying 30 credits in the current year, in the case where 120 credits is the norm for a full-time student, would be returned as 25.

Full-time, full year students would normally be returned as 100 and part-time students returned as a proportion of an equivalent full-time course. Comparisons and weightings of different full-time, full year courses are not expected. The proportion of part-time study can be estimated on either a 'time' or a 'credit' basis. The FTE should not be weighted to take account of any resourcing implications of different courses.

All students following a course would initially be assumed to have the same FTE. An adjustment may need to be made at individual student level if a student did not actually follow the whole course academic year, e.g. because they left half way through. This individual student adjustment need only be at a very broad-brush level.

The calculation of FTE therefore becomes a function of proportion (that the course represents of a full-time benchmark course) x time (amount of the course that the student followed in the HESA reporting year).

It is recognised that this cannot be exact in all cases and a strict pro-rata model is not expected. The aim is to give a better approximation than the use of arbitrary conversion factors.

In the case of years of programme which span two HESA reporting years (for example an MSc student with a 01 October - 30 September year) institutions in Scotland can return the FTE using either the pro-rata (50:50), 100:0 or 0:100 method as indicated in Instance.FTEMETHOD. However for institutions in England, Wales and Northern Ireland the Student FTE should be split across the two HESA reporting years. This does not have to be an exact pro-rata split: a reasonable approximation is sufficient (for example the institution might assume that 85% of the FTE related to the period October - July and 15% to the period August - September).

Institutions in England, Wales or Northern Ireland who before 2007/08 did not return student load using the pro-rata (50:50) method should return the record as if they had always used this method. HEFCE have indicated that the same guidance will apply to HESES return.

Further detailed notes are available in the supporting documents.

For students coded 'S - Studying abroad and included in the Student record as student has spent or will spend more than 8 weeks in the UK' in Instance.LOCSDY, Instance.STULOAD must reflect only that part of the course undertaken in the UK.

The length of this field is 5 characters, however the move to XML enables data to be returned with or without leading zeros or the decimal place, e.g. 005.0 or 5.0 or 5