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Of the 258,420 full-time leavers who completed HESA’s Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey, 73.6 per cent (73.6 per cent in 2003/04) had found employment. The number of leavers who were undertaking further study was 60,960 or 23.6 per cent (23.9 per cent). Of these, 21,750 were working whilst studying; this figure is included within the above employment figure. 15,385 or 6.0 per cent (5.9 per cent) were assumed to be unemployed.

The data is published in the Higher Education Statistics Agency’s latest publication Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education, 2004/05, released this week.

Following the recommendations of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, the Government asked the four UK higher education funding bodies (HEFCE, HEFCW, SHEFC and DELNI) to develop suitable indicators and benchmarks of performance in the higher education sector. The Performance Indicators Steering Group (PISG) was established, with membership drawn from government departments, the funding councils and representative bodies. PISG defines the specification and develops the Performance Indicators. They are calculated and published on their behalf by the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

This Statistical First Release (SFR) has been produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), in collaboration with Department for Education and Skills (DfES) statisticians. It provides details of the destinations of leavers from higher education (HE) who obtained qualifications in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United Kingdom (UK), during the academic year 2004/05. The data presented draws on the 2004/05 Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) record.

This press release looks at data from the HESA Staff Record. There are three types of staff collected within this record: academic staff, non-academic staff and atypical staff. The HESA Staff Record in its new form was introduced in 2003/04 and the compulsory collection of data on atypical staff from 2004/05. Unless otherwise stated the text of this release refers to non-atypical staff.

In 2004/05 there were 346,305 staff at institutions in the UK HE sector. 160,655 staff, or 46.4 per cent, were recorded as academic staff.

This press release looks at students studying below first degree level – termed by HESA as “other undergraduates”. Data in this press release relates to UK domiciled students only.

The higher education sector had a total income of £18.0 billion in the 2004/05 academic year compared to £16.9 billion in 2003/04.

In 2004/05, the total number of students domiciled from countries outside of the UK increased by 6.1 per cent from 300,055 to 318,400. The previous year-on-year increase was 9.0 per cent.

The first analysis of the HESA Staff record for 2004/05 shows that academic staff numbers increased by 6.9 percent. In 2004/05 there were 160,655 academic staff, up by 10,425 from 150,230 in 2003/04.

The 2004/05 HESA student dataset shows that the total number of HE students increased by 1.8 per cent from 2,247,440 in 2003/04 to 2,287,540.

This Statistical First Release (SFR) has been produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) in collaboration with Department for Education and Skills (DfES) statisticians. It provides provisional details of qualifications obtained by and examination results of higher education (HE) students at HE institutions (HEIs) in the United Kingdom (UK) for the academic year 2004/05.