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Student record 2019/20 - File structure

Version 1.1 Produced 2020-03-02

The physical file structure to be returned to HESA is based on the logical data model but with repeating elements associated with some of the logical entities expressed separately.

The repeating elements are:

Entity Repeating element Description
CourseCourseSubjectA HECoS subject code and a proportion indicator
ModuleModuleSubjectA HECoS subject code and a proportion indicator
InstanceFinancial SupportA financial support type and amount
InstanceITT PlacementPlacement information (English ITT only)
InstanceREFDataA Unit of Assessment code and a proportion indicator
Student Data Model


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. Providers 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.

Ordering of attributes for submission

The order in which entities and fields should be submitted is governed by the Cyy051.xsd file, which is ordered according to the following principles:

  • Entities are presented in parent-child order, starting with the 'Institution' entity.
  • Fields within entities are presented in the order of primary key fields, candidate key fields, foreign key fields, and non-key fields.
  • Child entities then follow.
  • Each field or entity within a parent entity is presented in alphabetical order to aid their location.

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