Data intelligence

In 2012/13, the University of Ulster did not return any academic atypical staff in error.  For 2013/14 they have returned 815 academic atypical staff.  They have confirmed that this figure should have been similar in 2012/13.

In 2013/14, Kingston University reviewed how they classified their hourly paid lecturers and external examiners from non-atypical to atypical. This increased the numbers of academic atypical staff from 0 in 2012/13 to 1105 (130 FTE) in 2013/14.

In 2013/14, St George's Hospital Medical School improved their data capture for academic atypical staff contracts, increasing the numbers in this category from 10 in 2012/13 to 375 in 2013/14. In previous years they have not collected data from these staff.

In 2013/14, Birkbeck College under-reported their academic atypical staff by approximately 200 due to data capture issues.

In 2013/14, The University of Leeds reviewed how they employed demonstrating and tutorial assistants, and part-time student teachers. This increased the numbers of academic atypical staff from 400 in 2012/13 to 1050 in 2013/14.

In 2012/13, The University of Ulster did not return any academic atypical staff in error.  For 2013/14 they have returned 815 academic atypical staff.  They have confirmed that this figure should have been similar in 2012/13.

In 2013/14, Heriot-Watt University under-reported the number of academic atypical staff by 220 (32.9 FTE).

During 2013/14, the University of Leicester undertook a major review of its atypical workforce, which resulted in a large number of changes to the way in which atypical contracts were issued.  This resulted in a number of year-on-year changes, including a reduction of 280 staff in their professional occupations SOC group.  In many cases, staff were moved to non-atypical working arrangements.

In 2013/14, Loughborough University revisited how it coded their atypical staff's SOC groupings resulting in an increase in the Professional occupations category from 215 in 2012/13 to 465 in 2013/14.

In 2013/14, The School of Oriental and African Studies over-reported their atypical staff by approximately 400.

In 2013/14, Coventry University increased the number of academic atypical staff from 610 in 2012/13 to 1080 in 2013/14. This was due to a genuine increase in the use of atypical staff within the provider.

In 2015/16, Newcastle University reported a 90% reduction in the total number of academic atypical staff. This was due to a large number of leavers in this cohort, as well as data cleansing exercise which removed staff incorrectly defined as on an academic atypical contract.

In 2019/20, University of Plymouth reported a 49% drop in the total number of academic atypical staff. This was because the University has recently undertaken some work on de-casualisation which has reduced atypical numbers, moving these staff to a permanent or fixed term contract. This has also led to a noticeable rise in academic part-time contracts.

In 2019/20, University of Greenwich reported an 85% increase in the total number of academic atypical staff. This was following a review of their mappings to some HESA fields including the Terms field which meant a code of atypical was more suitable for many of their HPL (hourly paid lecturer) contracts. Most staff that were previously classed as being on a fixed term contract were re-classified as atypical. A small number of those on a permanent/open ended contract were also re-classified as atypical.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2019/20 University of Bradford employed fewer academic atypical staff. This led to a 52% drop in the number of academic atypical staff at the provider this year.

In 2015/16, The University of Bolton under-reported the number of academic staff by approximately 30 members of staff, recognised as Higher Education Academy (HEA) fellows. Of these members of staff, approximately 20 were reported as holding Academic Teaching Qualifications.

The staff at University Centre Peterborough are formally employed by Peterborough Regional College. From 2019/20, no academic staff were returned by University Centre Peterborough.

The University College of Osteopathy was added as a new provider in 2016/17, previously this provider was reported by University of Bedfordshire affecting inflow figures for academic staff. Inflow and academic starter information has been set to 'Not applicable' for this provider.

The National Film and Television School (NFTS) became an HE provider in 2014/15 moving from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport into the HE sector.  As the school had not been part of the HE sector they have not followed the standard of issuing academic contracts to their teaching/research staff.  As such both teaching/research and non-academic staff are included in the non-academic category for 2014/15.
 

The University of Glamorgan merged with the University of Wales, Newport on the 11th April 2013 to become the University of South Wales. However the data for the 2011/12 academic session relates to the two former universities. The University of South Wales therefore request that when published it refers to the former providers and not merged into a single entity under the USW name.

In 2013/14, The School of Oriental and African Studies over-reported their atypical staff by approximately 400.

In 2014/15 The University of Southampton over-reported their atypical staff FTE by approximately 30 and fixed term teaching staff FTE by approximately 10.

Following the merger of the University of Glamorgan and University of Wales, Newport to become the University of South Wales, 13 staff records in the cost centres of general engineering, chemical engineering and sociology have been wrongly coded. This should not affect the significance of the data that is published.

In 2013/14, The University of Strathclyde miscoded staff numbers in cost centres 107 Pharmacy & pharmacology and 112 Biosciences. When analysing staff cost centre for this provider, please switch the numbers in the two cost centres.  This has also affected the provider’s student staff ratio (SSR), in SSR analysis please replace cost centre 107 (published as 41.2) with 19.4 and cost centre 112 (published as 9.5) with 21.1.

In 2019/20, Birkbeck College omitted to flag any of their staff as Early Career Researchers. The true value should have been approximately 25 staff.

The Open University has noted the decrease in FTE for academic staff on standard contracts in cost centre 54 from the 2010/11 results due to a correction to source data, where some staff from the Faculty of Business and Law had been incorrectly assigned to cost centre 54 in previous years.

The Open University has noted that the decrease in total FTE for academic staff on standard contracts from 2010/11 is due, in large part, to a change in the method used to calculate the FTE for Associate Lecturers, which is more finely grained and gives a more accurate representation of FTE for this group of staff.

In 2015/16, Kingston University under-reported the FTE values for academic teaching only staff by approximately 80.

In 2015/16, The University of South Wales conducted a data validation exercise following the introduction of a new HR/Payroll system. This resulted in changes in the method of calculating FTE/FPE, to better align with HESA reporting requirements.

In 2022/23, the BSL field has been introduced for reporting by providers in Scotland. This marks the first instance of some HE providers submitting this specific information. Survey completion and information returns have varied among staff, resulting in a notable percentage of data being reported as 'Not available.' Therefore, we advise caution when interpreting the BSL field for Scottish providers.