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Student 2017/18 - Term-time postcode

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Student 2017/18

Fields required from institutions in All fields

Term-time postcode


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Typefield
Short nameTTPCODE
Description

This field records a postcode for the student's term-time address at some point during the reporting year.

Applicable toEngland Northern Ireland Scotland Wales
Coverage

All students where any (Instance.LOCSDY does not equal 6, 9, D, S or T and Instance.REDUCEDI = 00) unless provider in Wales and Course.COURSEAIM begins with P, Q, R, S or X.

Notes

This field is required for all students except those studying by distance learning and those on placements.

This can be a postcode from any point during term-time, but should not be a correspondence or summer contact address. It is expected that in many cases the postcode will change between years. Where students spend all or part of the year in a hall of residence the provider will be able to insert a generic postcode for that that hall into all of the relevant records.

Although completion of the field will be compulsory for all students, 'Unknown' values will be acceptable. If no valid postcode (full or outward only) can be ascertained an empty element should be returned, i.e:

           <TTPCODE></TTPCODE>

It will be possible to provide only the outward part of the postcode if this is all that is known, although that is not expected to arise commonly.

Postcodes returned must pass schema validation of format. Individual postcodes will be validated against the Royal Mail list but only a warning rather than an error will be generated if validation fails. This is intended to assist providers that attach importance to the accuracy of their contact information but who may not be in a position to validate postcodes themselves.

British Forces Post Office (BFPO) postcodes

Where BFPO codes relate to UK locations, providers will need to locate the Royal Mail equivalent postcode for the base.

There is further guidance on valid postcode formats at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govtalk/schemasstandards/e-gif/datastandards.aspx. The business rule structure validation will be slightly less strict than that described in UK Government Data Standards Catalogue, as not all parsers will support the full GDSC definition. All postcodes are validated against valid postcodes at exception.

Examples

A typical postcode such as GL50 3DA would be coded with a blank in the fifth character position. A postcode such as B1 6SR would have a blank in position 3. The part of the postcode before the space is known as the outward part of the postcode and can be 2, 3 or 4 characters long. The part of the postcode after the space is known as the inward part of the postcode and is a fixed length of 3 characters. The space between the outward and inward parts of the postcode must always be shown as part of the postcode.

There is further guidance on valid postcode formats at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govtalk/schemasstandards/e-gif/datastandards.aspx. The business rule structure validation is slightly less strict than that described in UK Government Data Standards Catalogue, as not all parsers will support the full GDSC definition. All postcodes are validated against valid postcodes at exception, using the Office for National Statistics Postcode Directory (ONSPD).

Quality rules
Quality rules relating to this field are displayed here.
Part of
Field length8
Minimum occurrences0
Maximum occurrences1
Schema components
Element: TTPCODE
Related fields
OwnerBS7666
Version1.1
Date modified2018-02-22
Change management notesThe coverage statement has been revised to remove REDUCEDI = 07 following this valid entry's removal.

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