Collection specification and technical content
The Student - Data Futures collection specification is a product of extensive work with Statutory Customers, HE Providers and sector bodies.
Areas of development are listed in the specification: ongoing development section.
In addition to feeding back through consultations on the Data specification overview page, please email [email protected] as we continually refine the data specification based on your feedback.
Collection specification: activity and information
| Description | Summary of requirement | Status | Status updates |
|---|---|---|---|
| UCAS *J 2021/22 changes |
Any changes being made to *J for 2021/22 will be reflected in the Data Futures specification. HESA should receive this around November and will impact assess the level of changes required at that point. HESA have now impact assessed the changes in the *J specification, and we believe in Data Futures this will mean:
|
Open | 11/21: raising for awareness |
| Part-time fee waiver |
The breakdown of the part-time fee waiver schemes in the StudentFinancialSupport.FINSUPTYPE field, are no longer required. These are codes:
This will be simplified to just one code for all types. This is a new request from HEFCW for a change to the 2022/23 collection. |
Open | 08/11/21: raising for awareness |
| National Identity | The Student.NationalIdentity entity will be removed, as there is no longer a requirement to collect this data from providers in Wales. | Open | 08/11/21: raising for awareness |
| Entry Qual Subjects | The EntryQualificationAward.EntryQualificationSubject entity currently has a maximum occurrence of five - but we aren't aware of any requirements to collect multiple subjects here and believe this should be only one subject (only one comes through on the UCAS *J files) | Open | 04/11/21: raising for awareness |
| Engineering Conversion Course Pilot scheme | The "Engineering conversion course pilot scheme" code 003 in the CourseInitiative.INITIATIVEID and StudentInitiatives.INITIATIVEID fields will be removed, as this scheme is no longer running. | Open | 11/10/21: raising for awareness |
| Ethnicity and Religion markers | Country applicable markers added for Student.ETHNIC and Student.RELIGION | Resolved | 11/11/21: fixed in the release today |
| Disability codes |
There were a couple of incorrect mappings in the disability codes. Code 51 "Learning difference such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or AD(H)D" should have been mapped to 02 "The student has cognitive or learning difficulties" in the second grouping; and Code 53 "Social/communication conditions such as a speech and language impairment or an autistic spectrum condition" should have been mapped to 01 "The student has a social or communication impairment" in the second grouping. |
Resolved | 11/11/21: fixed in the release today |
| Valid entries "00" |
Five instances of valid entires "00" in fields will be remapped to other codes, to be consistent with other coding frames across the model.
|
Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 25/10/21: expected in the next release |
| 2023/24 change: Pregnancy and Maternity leave |
OfS and HEFCW would like to explore the options for collecting pregnancy and maternity leave data with providers in more detail, with the intention of finding a different way of obtaining the information using providers’ existing data sources for 2023/24. OfS and HEFCW would encourage providers to send their thoughts on how we could collect data on information that providers already hold in this area to [email protected]. |
Open | 13/10/21: raising for awareness, but will not change until 2023/24. |
| 2023/24 change: DfE-NI funded taught masters scheme | After being added to the Student record in 2021/22, we will need to remove the code in Data Futures 2023/24 as it is only a one year initiative. | Open | 13/10/21: raising for awareness, but will not change until 2023/24. |
| 2023/24 change: SOC2020 |
This is about implementing the SOC 2020 codes from the 2023/24 collections. UCAS have also confirmed that they will be using SOC2020 from Apply 2022 onwards (which is the 2023/24 equivalent for HESA). |
Open | 13/10/21: raising for awareness, but will not change until 2023/24. |
| Personal characteristics outcomes | The majority of the structural changes from the personal characteristics and equality data consultation are now included in the data futures specification, but we are still working through all the detailed guidance and recommended questions. These will be worked through with statutory customers in the coming months and we expect to release details by the end of the year. | Open | 30/9/21: raising for awareness |
| Qualification categories for visiting students | New valid entries *91 "Studying at level *, with formal or informal credit" (at each appropriate level) to be added to Qualification.QUALCAT field, to capture visiting student who may not necessarily aim for formal credit or qualifications. | Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| NCM Nursing Associate guidance | New valid entry for "Recognised by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) for the purpose of registration as a qualified nursing associate" to be added into ACCRDITATIONID fields. | Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| Postgraduate loan eligibility initiative | Valid entries 005 "PGR Loan Eligibility" and 027 "Place supported by the SFC's Upskilling Fund" to be added into CourseInitiative.INITIATIVEID field, to be at the correct level that providers need to return this data. | Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| Social Work England | Valid entry "HCPC: Social workers in England" will be removed from the following fields: CurriculumAccreditation.ACCREDITATIONID code 06914 StudentAccreditationAim.ACCREDITATIONID code 06914 QualificationAwardAccreditation.ACCREDITATIONID code 06914 New valid entry 06921 for "Social Work England" will be added in its place, to keep in line with changes made in 2020/21 records. |
Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| Micro-credential courses | New valid entry required in the CourseInitiative.INITIATIVEID field for "Micro-credential course", to keep in line with changes made in 2021/22 records. | Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| Valid entry in Invoice HESA identifier field | New valid entry required in the StudentCourseSession.INVOICEHESAID field for "Provider own funds". | Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| Sex identifier field |
Implementing the agreed outcomes from the consultation, following discussions about the best implementation for this data. |
Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| Cost centre data for PGR students | Need to clarify with statutory customers the requirements around cost centre data for PGR students - currently none can be returned as PGR students don't return module data. May need new fields adding if this is a requirement. | Open | 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| Student Initiatives entity name | The "s" will be removed from the end of the entity name, to match with the similar CourseInitiative entity name. | Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| FUNDLEVEL field name | OfS have asked us to reconsider the name of the Course.FUNDLEVEL field to "Pre-requisite" as this was felt to be more appropriate, as this is more about what a student enters the course with, rather than about level of funding. | Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| Proportion / numeric fields | We will be making update in the schema for fields that collect proportion or numeric data, to amend the field lengths to be more specific. COSTCNPROPORTION, CRPROPORTION and QUALPROPORTION will be amended to field length 3 (as they are returned as a whole integer). PREDICTEDSTULOAD, RPSTULOAD and STULOAD will be amended to field length 5 (as they are returned as a three digit number, plus a decimal space). | Open | 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| XSD updates to data types | We will potentially be making some updates to the data types in the schema, agmonst other things to include min and max restrictions where this makes sense. | Open | 30/9/21: expected in the next release |
| Off Venue Activity HOSTID | There is an error in the schema for the OffVenueActivity.HOSTID field. It is currently down as a mandatory field, but it is only required for OffVenueActivity.ACTTYPEID codes 01 and 04. This will be amended in a future release. | Resolved |
30/9/21: fixed in the release today 9/6/21: bug reported |
| PARED - valid entry |
The valid entry 7 "No response given" was not copied across from the Student / Student Alternative records, into the EntryProfile.PARED equivalent field in Data Futures. This had been included for applicants who fail to answer the question through the UCAS Apply questionnaire. We are considering whether this code should be included explicitly in Data Futures, or whether it should be mapped to code 99 "Not available". Note: this was added as code 03 in the PARED field. |
Resolved |
11/11/21: fixed in the release today 30/9/21: expected in the next release 9/6/21: issue identified |
| QUALYEAR field does exist | The EntryQualificationAward.QUALYEAR field has been missed off the physical data model jpg, but does appear on the data dictionary page. This field does exist and the physical data model will be amended to match in a future release. | Resolved |
30/9/21: fixed in the release today 4/6/21: bug reported |
| 2020/21 changes not yet reflected |
Some of the coding frames in Data Futures have not been kept up to date with Student / Student Alternative releases - the example here is the EntryQualificationSubject.SUBJECTID field. UCAS have made many amendments to the 2020/21 specification that have not yet been copied across to Data Futures. Please be aware that anything relating to changes made in 2020/21 coding manuals will at some point be reflected in the data dictionary in Data Futures, we just haven't done the reconcilliation exercise as yet and we will aim to do this before Beta. |
Resolved |
30/9/21: many of these have been fixed in the release today - please let us know if you spot any others. 28/5/21: raising for awareness, expected to be address by Beta |
| General typos | Minor typos have been found in the XSD and on the webpages. All that have been found will be fixed in the next release. | Resolved |
30/9/21: fixed in the release today 28/5/21: raising for awareness |
| PARED - valid entries |
The valid entries in the EntryProfile.PARED field are the wrong way around in the data dictionary - codes 99 and 98 will be swapped over in the next release. |
Resolved |
30/9/21: fixed in the release today 28/5/21: raising for awareness |
| ACCESSPRG - valid entry | A mysterious code 03 called "New Label" has crept into the EntryProfile.ACCESSPRG field in the data dictionary. This is a mistake and will be removed in a future release. | Resolved |
30/9/21: fixed in the release today 28/5/21: raising for awareness |
| XSD - composite keys | There are areas in the data model where we have used composite keys to enforce uniqueness, but this is not working as expected (when we added in the key restrictions in a recent release, we haven't got the foreign key references working correctly). This is causing "unique contraint" errors to be flagged when submitting files through the system, when they shouldn't be. | Resolved |
29/4/21: fixed in the release today 18/2/21: This will be fixed before the start of Alpha |
| Backward mapping - missing rows | There are two missing rows from the backward mapping document: APELCRD and OWNVENUEID (both new fields that haven't been included in the mapping document). This will be added in a future release. | Resolved |
3/3/21: fixed in the release today 9/2/21: will be fixed in the next release |
| Typo in the data label | There is a typo in the label for code 02 in the ModuleDeliveryRole.FRANIND field. | Resolved |
3/3/21: fixed in the release today 28/1/21: minor typo, will be fixed in the next release |
| XSD doesn't allow UKPRNs | There are a few errors in the XSDs being produced since version 1.0.0 on 31 March - any field which allows a UKPRN to be submitted as well as others codes (such as ModuleDeliveryRole.HESAID and OffVenueActivity.HOSTID) do not currently support unions and so the UKPRNs cannot be submitted in the schema. The generic codes can be submitted, but nothing else. | Resolved |
3/3/21: fixed in the release today 21/9/20: XSD generation currently being worked on by the development team. |
| XSD has 'action' references | There are a few errors in the XSDs being produced since version 1.0.0 on 31 March - the actions contained within this are no longer relevant in a discrete collection. These will be removed in a future release. | Resolved |
3/3/21: fixed in the release today 10/9/20: XSD generation currently being worked on by development team. |
| XSD maximum occurences | There is an error in the XSD produced in version 1.4.0 on 26 August - the maximum occurences within many entities is now displaying as unbounded. This should be showing the same values as appeared in the version 1.3.0 release. | Resolved |
3/3/21: fixed in the release today 10/9/20: Awaiting fix to XSD. |
We are reviewing the data model and associated specification items. We have arranged available items according to status:
- Available for consultation: we will announce when these are available and update this page.
- Under consideration: items may rely on another item being consulted or reviewed
- Not under consultation: may be required for a discrete collection, or subject to statutory requirements