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HESA Aggregate record for students studying wholly outside the UK 2013/14

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HESA Aggregate return for student studying wholly overseas 2013/14

File structure


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Version 1.0 Produced 2014-04-30

The physical file structure to be returned to HESA is identical to the data model, shown in the diagram below.

HESA Aggregate offshore record entity relationship diagram

Click on the relevant section of the model to view the fields associated with each entity.

Aggregate Offshore Data Model Provision Institution

Key :

One to many icon

One-to-many relationship

Optional icon

Mandatory participation of the entity in this relationship


Note: A HEP making a nil-return will have no provision.

Data format

Data must be returned to HESA as an XML file. XML is the eXtensible Markup Language and is a W3C recommendation. There are many XML training resources on the web, including the W3C Tutorial on XML and the resources of W3Schools.

Files must be encoded with UTF-8 and schema validation will be in place to ensure this. HEPs must specify the encoding used in their XML files in the first line of the file (i.e. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>) and to ensure that their files are actually saved with that encoding. If XML files are edited with some text editors and the encoding is not specified or does not match the actual file encoding, there may be problems when submitting these files for validation.

Contact Liaison by email or on +44 (0)1242 388 531.