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HESA Student Record 2010/11 - Unique Learner Number

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HESA Student Record 2010/11

Fields required from institutions in England

Unique Learner Number


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Typefield
Short nameULN
Description

This field records a 10-digit numeric identifier.

Applicable toEngland Northern Ireland Scotland Wales
Coverage

Compulsory for those students who have been issued with a ULN

Notes

The Unique Learner Number (ULN) is being developed, and the specification of this field falls within the scope of the Aligned Data Definitions and follows the Data Standards in the HESA student record. In the long-term it is anticipated that the ULN will replace the plethora of personal identifiers used by different organisations in the education sector.

The ULN is a ten-digit number with a non-zero number in the first position and a check digit in the final position. Further information regarding the ULN from the MIAP web site can be found here. Since the ULN is issued by the Learner Registration Service, an institutions' only obligation will be to check the validity of the number by performing the checksum validation test below.

The ULN checksum follows the same basic principles as the NHS number, but has been designed to ensure that there is no replication of ULN and NHS number. The checksum validation process is as follows:

  • Check that the first digit is nonzero
  • Sum the product of the digits multiplied by the weights 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
  • Divide this number by 11
  • The remainder should be 10.

(e.g. ULN 9276308686. (9*10)+(2*9)+(7*8)+(6*7)+(3*6)+(0*5)+(8*4)+(6*3) +(8*2)+(6*1) = 296. 296/11=26, remainder 10)

For additional information, an Excel spreadsheet showing how the final check digit (and leading digit for Scottish Candidate Number (SCN) based ULNs) is calculated can be downloaded here.

Quality rules
Quality rules relating to this field are displayed here.
Reason required

To facilitate linking between years of HESA data and between the Student Record and other data sources.

Part of
Field length10
Minimum occurrences0
Maximum occurrences1
Schema components
Element: ULN
OwnerInformation Standards Board - Aligned Data Definitions
Version1.2
Date modified2011-06-30
Change management notesBusiness rule 2 downgraded to a warning

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