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Student record 2016/17 (C16051): Annual update - Outcomes

This document sets out the results of the consultation process and summarises the changes that will be implemented for 2016/17. 

The Student C16051 annual update consultation  

59 responses to our consultation were received from the HE sector. We are grateful to everybody who responded. A summary of the consultation responses is available which also contains further information on the background to these changes. 

Changes to Student record for 2016/17 

Items to be removed

1. The following valid entries will be removed from the Student.DISABLE field 

  • 02 Blind/Partially sighted
  • 03 Deaf/ Hearing impairment
  • 04 Wheelchair user/ mobility difficulties
  • 05 Personal care support
  • 06 Mental health difficulties
  • 07 An unseen disability, e.g. diabetes, epilepsy, asthma
  • 10 Autistic Spectrum Disorder
  • 11 A specific learning difficulty e.g. dyslexia
  • 97 Information refused
  • 98 Information not sought
  • 99 Not known  

These codes are now only used for continuing students (those who started before 01/08/2010) and will need to be re-coded. 

2. Valid entry 8 'NCTL funded flexible provision (ITT)' will be removed from Course.TTCID.

3. Valid entry A 'National Scholarship Programme (NSP)' will be removed from the Instance.INITIATIVES field.  

4. Valid entry 2 ‘Employer engagement co-funded students’ from the Instance.INITIATIVES field will be removed. 

5. The following valid entries will be removed since the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills do not directly fund students or courses:

  • Course.MSFUND (valid entry 12 'BIS')
  • Instance.MSTUFEE (valid entry 33 'BIS')

Changes to valid entries

6. Valid entry 05 ‘Provider waiver of support costs’ in Instance.MSTUFEE will be removed. A new valid entry, entitled ‘Provider own funds’ will be introduced with a new code to take its place. The guidance will also be re-framed to include the statement: "includes scholarships, bursaries and fee waivers funded from the HE provider's own funds". 

Changes relating to Coverage statements 

7. Dormant students (i.e. Mode 63 or 64) will be removed from Instance.GROSSFEE and Instance.NETFEE. Coverage statements and validation will be updated to accommodate this. GROSSFEE and NETFEE will become optional for dormant students. 

8. Courses coded in Course.COURSEAIM as L99 'Research-based higher degree where the student may ultimately study at levels D or L' will be removed from the coverage of the Course.COLLORG field. 

Changes relating to Maximum occurrences of fields 

9. The maximum occurrences in Course.REGBODY will be increased to two to accommodate cases where individual students have two regulatory bodies from the list of valid entries. 

New valid entries 

10. A new (generic) valid entry ‘Other UK training providers’ will be added to the EntryProfile.PREVINST field. This field will not distinguish between ‘private’ and ‘public’ training providers, but will assist in returning data where the information is known, but none of the other UK generic codes apply. It therefore assists providers in reducing their total number of ‘unknown’ responses. 

11. A new Course.COURSEAIM code will be added for a new valid entry ‘Level 5 Diploma in Education and Training (DET)’. This is likely to receive a code in the range beginning with “I”. 

12. A new Course.COURSEAIM code will be added for a new valid entry 'Postgraduate Diploma in Education' to distinguish these ITT qualifications from other postgraduate diplomas, and to resolve the anomalous position of their being returned as PGCEs. 

13. A new code will be added to Instance.INITIATIVES field to record students studying under the ‘Q-Step’ initiative. Unfortunately, our investigations revealed no systematic basis on which we could derive this information programmatically, in order to relieve burden, as providers hold this information in a variety of different ways. 

New Fields

14. A free-text field on the Qualifications on Entry entity will be added. This will be an entirely optional free field for providers to use if they wish to associate that entity with a locally held identifier. The new field name will be OWNQUAL, similarly to OWNINST and OWNSTU.

Other outcomes from 2016/17 Student record consultation 

The following items have been consulted on, but will not result in changes at the present time.  Following analysis of the responses, sufficient issues have arisen which will require further investigation and discussion. We will investigate further and find an appropriate solution in each case.  

Subject of course

One provider raised this item, and we decided to consult on it to assess the appetite for making this change. Following the consultation it has been decided not to increase maximum occurrences of the entity Course subject. The majority of providers did not support the proposal and the effort outweighed the benefit for providers in implementing the change. However, it is interesting to note that around 20% of providers have courses that they believe could or should be coded with greater than three subject codes. This finding will be forwarded to the Data Language project for further consideration. 

MPharm entry qualification

A new code in EntryProfile.QUALENT3 to represent the MPharm qualification was requested by a provider, but will not be implemented (at least for now). There is no requirement for this separate code from our statutory customers. HE providers continue to be able to record MPharm qualifications under existing codes in Qualent3. The consultation raised various issues which will need to be considered further.  

Full-time and part-time FE students

The Department for Education (DfE) requested that two codes should be added for FE students only in the Instance.MODE field, whether the provision is part time or full time. We will need to look into the proposal further as the majority of providers have said they will not use the codes and that the burden of introduction will be high. However a number of providers have also stated “N/A” when asked if they support the addition of the new codes, and we need to investigate this further. We will discuss this issue with the DfE and revisit this in future. 

Tier 4 visa marker

Providers were consulted on providing data on students who have a Tier 4 visa marker. This was at the request of several providers who believed this would have a minimal burden and be a helpful addition to the UK Student record as it might assist in a range of public policy discussions. Support for returning this data was high at around 80% of respondents. 

Unexpectedly, consultation revealed a three-way split of opinion regarding where the new field should be located, as well as several providers stating an increase in burden for them. Therefore this proposal will be forwarded to the Data Language project where the architectural implications of the location of the marker can be considered (regardless of whether it is ever collected). 

Changes to Northern Ireland Student record only

DELNI have identified changes to the NI fields in the student record. These changes are required as part of DELNI Widening Participation Strategy in HE to improve and standardise the WP-related sources of data collected by the NI higher education providers. 

Current religion codes in EntryProfile.RELIGION will be replaced by the following:   

  • 01 Protestant
  • 02 Roman Catholic
  • 03 Buddhist
  • 04 Hindu
  • 05 Jewish
  • 06 Muslim
  • 07 Sikh
  • 08 Other Christian
  • 09 Other religion 
  • 10 No Religion
  • 11 Not Stated.

The field length will be increased to 2 to accommodate the expanded coding frame. Institutions will not be able to map directly from old code 3 to new codes 08 or 09. 

If you have any queries regarding this please contact us by email or on 01242 211144.