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- Data Updates
- Important: Update on HESA Track Data
We have an update for members on the expected arrival of the delayed HESA Track data for the 2022/23 (or earlier) Student cohort entry year, alongside some changes to the data of which Jisc have recently made us aware
In our last update on the continued delays with the HESA data for Students who were ready to enter higher education (HE) in 2022/23 or earlier, we let you know that Jisc had intended to provide us with the linked HESA data file by the end of March 2025, and we were expecting to provide this to members by late May or early June 2025.
We are unfortunately yet to receive the linked file. However, we have been speaking to Jisc who have been in constant communication about their difficulty including the Students from earlier years within the dataset. Changes to the Data Futures model mean that fields and underlying data values have changed from the legacy Student model data to the new Student model and this is causing more problems than first anticipated.
Proposed data changes and impact
To get around these difficulties and give us a chance of meeting our planned date of sharing the data with you by June 2025, Jisc have asked us to consider restricting our linked data supply to cover the Student entrant years of 2015/16 to 2022/23. Previous data supplies have also covered the Student entrant years of 2007/08 to 2014/15.
We have reviewed the cohort and the 2015/16 to 2022/23 entrant period covers 92% of all Students submitted, meaning that we will not receive an update on data for 8% of our tracked Student cohort. Therefore, the overall impact will be minimal. At member level, there are some members who are disproportionately affected by this, particularly those who have large proportions of historic data. However, with Access and Participation Plans (APPs) typically relating to delivery over the more recent period, we think that members will be most keen to receive their updated data for more recent entrants, on which they will likely base their programme evaluation.
Let’s take a closer look at the historic cohorts
The historic Student cohorts that Jisc are struggling to link will have entered higher education between the years 2007/08 and 2014/15. We do, therefore, already have the linked datasets for these Students. Jisc have offered to extend the licence on the data we currently hold, so that we can continue to use this.
What we may be missing are any updates on these Students in terms of attainment, graduate outcome survey (GOS) data and postgraduate (PG) progression.
However, given that the most recent cohort entered higher education in 2014/15, we already have the full complement of attainment data for those on three and four year courses, graduate outcome survey data for all graduates within three or four years (relating to GOS years 2017 and 2018) and PG data for a period of six possible progression years following completion of their undergraduate course (or five for those on a four year course). We therefore anticipate these missing data updates to have minimal impact.
There will be value changes that we will need to account for when combining data pre and post 2015/16, but if we can retain the previously linked data, then no data will be lost for these older cohorts. We therefore believe that the impact of not receiving an update for older cohorts will be minimal and would like to go ahead and receive the data from Jisc for the 2015/16-2022/23 cohorts.
In terms of next steps, we will check this proposed approach with the HEAT Research Group over the next week, with a view to making a decision by 4 PM on Wednesday 7th May 2025.
If you foresee any issues or have any questions about this update, please don’t hesitate to contact us via HEAT Support.
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