HE-BCI record 2018/19 - Introduction
Version 1.0 Produced 2019-07-26
Context
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has been established to undertake data collection and analysis about higher education to provide consistent information about higher education throughout the UK. HESA is a co-regulated sector agency, providing statutory services for the four governments and related bodies of the UK, but owned and funded by higher education providers. For England these arrangements were enshrined in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 with HESA appointed as the Designated Data Body (DDB).
HESA has the responsibility for integrating statistical data collection across all publicly funded higher education providers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and OfS registered approved higher education providers in England. The record has been constructed in such a way as to recognise this diversity. As far as possible, the aim has been to generate a single record that can be applied to all publicly funded or registered approved higher education providers throughout the UK, irrespective of their different natures and funding regimes.
The coding manual sets out the requirements for the collection of data for the Higher Education - Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) collection. Throughout this manual, the term ‘related bodies’ should be interpreted as referring to the HEP's principal funding body in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the relevant statutory and regulatory bodies in England. The term therefore includes; the Office For Students (OfS), UK Research and Innovation (including Research England), the Department for Education (DfE), Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW), the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland (DfE, NI) and Department for Communities (DfC) for Northern Ireland.
Record specific detail
Full details of the coverage of this record can be found in the coverage statement of the coding manual. This contains detailed information about the purpose and scope of each element of the return.
Data collected
The HE-BCI record is collected annually from all publicly funded higher education institutions (HEIs) in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and registered approved higher education providers in England, collectively referred to as higher education providers (HEPs) by HESA. The record is collected in December using a workbook and a web form.
The HE-BCI record consists of two sections: the first (Part A) is a qualitative questionnaire, this will be collected by HESA as a web form. The second (Part B) is a set of quantitative data, which will be collected in a separate spreadsheet.
Data collection
To ensure consistency across the data streams collected, the HESA reporting period for this collection is always from 01 August year 1 to 31 July year 2. For example, the 2000/2001 Student record was collected in respect of the activity which took place between 01 August 2000 and 31 July 2001.
Data must be returned using the templates provided by HESA for the relevant year. The HE-BCI (Part B) will be distributed by HESA as a spreadsheet template file to be completed and returned by HEPs. The template (in .xlsx format) for the return are made available for HEPs to download from the HE-BCI record home page. Once completed, these files should be returned using the data collection system..
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