Initial Teacher Training record 2016/17 - Data standards in the Initial Teacher Training record
Initial Teacher Training record 2016/17 - Data standards in the Initial Teacher Training record
Version 1.0 Produced 2016-04-30
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 HESA ITT record.
UK Register of Learning Providers
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 providers. See the the UK Register of Learning Providers (UKRLP) web site for further information.
Unique Learner Number (ULN)
The allocation of ULNs was piloted with a first major roll out in 2007 covering students who were on the National Pupil Database. It is anticipated that systems will be put in place to issue ULNs to mature students and students from overseas. Students who have been allocated a ULN should be aware of this fact and should have access to their number. However, it is likely to be a number of years before all students entering higher education are able to provide this information.
Fields affected by the ISB Aligned Data Definitions (ADD)
The following table shows those fields affected by the ADD. Fields marked as an ADD field are contained within the current set of ADD; those marked as an 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 |
| Provider.UKPRN | Y | Valid UK Provider Reference Number from the UKRLP. | |
| Student.ULN | Y | Standard structure with checksum. | |
| Student.BIRTHDTE | Y | ISO8601 date format. | |
| Student.SURNAME | Y | Standard character set. Maximum field length of 100 characters. | |
| Student.SNAME16 | Y | Standard character set. Maximum field length of 100 characters. | |
| Student.FNAMES | Y | Standard character set. Maximum field length of 100 characters. | |
| Student.COMDATE | Y | ISO8601 date format. | |
| Student.ENDDATE | Y | ISO8601 date format. | |
| Student.SPLENGTH | Y | Representation of not applicable with reason code. | |
| Student.CTITLE | Y | Standard character set. | |
| Student.OWNSTU | Y | Standard character set. |
Data policy
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 ITT 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 characterset
- Use of UTF-8 for encoding Unicode characters
- Representing Metadata - Additional information shall be represented using attributes in XML Schema. Such data can be represented as elements or attributes. Elements are the more flexible approach, but result in needing another level of hierarchy. Attributes meet the requirements for this data and their use in this context matches the implementation of other e-GIF systems.
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