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- Data Updates
- New Academic Year Data Cleaning 2024
Please ensure all Activity and Student information for the most recent academic year (2023/2024) is checked and cleaned by Thursday 31st October 2024, to help you meet the end of year data cleaning deadline in November 2024
As the new academic year begins, we would like to remind members to complete the following data check and cleaning tasks in order to best prepare your data for internal or external reporting and HEAT tracking, and efficiently maintain your records and keep track of any Student duplications.
Fixed deadline
There is one fixed deadline by which all data must be entered onto the database to be included in the HEAT Track, which is Friday 29th November 2024.
Data Cleaning and Entry Deadlines Overview
To support you in comfortably reaching this hard deadline, we have two earlier deadlines which we recommend you meet. Whilst these earlier deadlines do not directly affect the Student records sent to HESA for the HEAT-HESA Track, they will help ensure complete data capture for other projects. We therefore ask all members to:
- Ensure that Activity and Student information for the most recent academic year (2023/2024) is entered into the system by Friday 30th August 2024
- Check, and if necessary clean, all Student and Activity record data for the most recent academic year (2023/2024), and complete all Student Duplicate and Retention cleaning by Thursday 31st October 2024
- Fixed deadline for all HEAT Track data to be extracted by Friday 29th November 2024
For more information about the deadlines, please read the Data Cleaning and Management User Guide on File Store (members only).
Database Features and Tools to support Data Cleaning
Regular reviews of your data is best practice and will ease the burden of end-of-year cleaning. Members can download the User Guide on File Store to learn more about the HEAT Data Cleaning tools that can be used to check that Activities have been added correctly, in line with the Database Activity Typology, and Students required for tracking are complete. Clean data is essential for accurate internal and national reporting, including tracking.
- The Activity Clean search filters, available in the User Guide, allow easy identification of erroneous or missing records. Records can be amended either within the database or by using the import function to make bulk changes
- Check for potential Student Duplicates using the Duplicate Clean Tool (this feature may not be available to all Users due to Role permissions)
- The Dashboard Data Collection summary can assist with missing or invalid data items that render them ineligible for tracking (this feature may not be available to all Users due to Role permissions)
- Students’ ‘Expected HE Entry Year’ should also be checked for accuracy as this field will determine when a student record is entered into the Track
- Check the Retention Tool for any Students who need to be deleted from the database, according to the HEAT Data Retention Schedule. Alternatively, if your organisation follows their own retention policy then you will need to ensure you are deleting Students in accordance with your own policy
Once members have checked all suitable Activities and Student records we’d recommend reviewing the Student HESA Tracking tab on the Dashboard that will show the number of students included in the next round of higher education entry tracking.
For more information, please see the Data Cleaning and Management User Guide on File Store. If you would like further guidance regarding the cleaning process, please contact HEAT Support.
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