Timing of the return

69% of respondents indicated that their provider would be able to submit data on TNE provision once year, compared to 23% who indicated that they would be able to submit the data twice a year to match the Student submission timescales.

38% of respondents scored the set-up burden of submitting TNE data once per year in the “4-7” category and 46% of respondents scored the run burden in the “4-7” category as well. 62% of respondents scored the set-up burden of submitting TNE data twice per year in the “8-10” category and 54% of respondents scored the run burden in the “8-10” category as well.

Those respondents who preferred to submit the data once per year highlighted their concerns that multiple submissions would entail significant additional burden and that consequent resourcing constraints may compromise data quality; that most of the proposed aggregate data would not confer any additional benefit by being collected and submitted twice; and that without an obvious benefit to increasing the frequency of returns, the justification for any requirement to submit twice per year would have to be clear.

Those respondents who preferred to submit the data twice per year commented that their TNE data is already held in the same system as the Student data, and that if the decision were taken to combine the TNE data with Student data, it would make the most sense to submit all of that data with the same frequency. They did however note that aligning the submission timescales would require work to align processes and timescales for academic activity.