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Staff record 2014/15

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Data standards

Version 1.0 Produced 2014-11-06

Contents: UK Register of Learning Providers | Fields affected by the ISB Aligned Data Definitions (ADD) | Data Policy | Non-academic staff

The Information Standards Board (ISB) for education, skills and children's services (escs) is the overarching authority and governing body for the management and assurance of information and data standards across the escs system. It is both adopting existing data standards and developing new data standards for this domain and is subsuming the standards developed by the MIAP programme. The Aligned Data Definitions adopted by the ISB define a standard set of data definitions and policies.

This document describes the adoption of relevant data standards in the Staff record.

UK Register of Learning ProvidersBack to top

Adoption of the UK Provider Reference Number (UKPRN) is a key element in the standardisation of data definitions between stakeholders' systems. It is envisaged that, over time, all stakeholders will adopt the UKPRN as the primary identifier for higher education providers. See the the UK Register of Learning Providers (UKRLP) web site for further information.

Fields affected by the ISB Aligned Data Definitions (ADD)Back to top

The following table shows those fields affected by the ADD. Fields marked as a ADD field are contained within the current set of ADD; those marked as a ADD standard are not specifically included in the current set of ADD, but are affected by ADD standards and/or data policy. Details of the specification can be found in the documentation for each field.

Field ADD field ADD standard Notes
Institution.UKPRN Y Valid UK Provider Reference Number from the UKRLP. This replaces the INSTID field.
Person.NATION Y Standard coding frame based on the ISO-3166-1 Alpha-2 list of country codes and adapted by the Office for National Statistics.

Data PolicyBack to top

In addition to individual field definitions, the Aligned Data Definitions set out areas of data policy that apply to many fields or across the return specification as a whole. The following areas of data policy are adopted in the Staff record. The full set of data policy statements can be found in the ADD documentation on the ISB web site.

  • Use of XML schemas that adhere to the W3C XML Schema Recommendation
  • Use of the Unicode character set
  • Use of UTF-8 for encoding Unicode characters

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