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- Data Updates
- New Academic Year Data Cleaning 2025
Please ensure all Activity, Student and Ambassador data for the most recent academic year (2024/2025) is checked and cleaned by Friday 31st October, to help you meet the final end of year data deadline in November
As the new academic year begins, we would like to remind members to complete the following data entry and cleaning tasks in order to best prepare your data for internal or external reporting and the next HEAT Track cycle.
Ensuring your Activity and Student data is entered, checked and cleaned on the system by the recommended deadline of Friday 31st October 2025 will help maintain your records and keep track of any Student duplications ahead of the final fixed HEAT Track deadline in November.
HEAT Track Fixed Deadline
There is one fixed deadline by which all data must be entered onto the LIVE database to be included in the HEAT Track, which is Friday 28th November 2025.
This means any Student and Activity data you would like to be sent for tracking for Key Stage 4 (GCSE attainment), Key Stage 5 (A-level or equivalent attainment) or HESA (higher education entry and progression) outcomes must be entered onto system by the last working day of November in order for the Data Team to extract this from the system.
Additionally, if you would like to send any Ambassador records for tracking into higher education through the HESA Track, these muse be entered on the database by Friday 28th November 2025.
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 the Department for Education and Jisc for the Key Stage 4, Key Stage 5 and HESA Track, they will help ensure complete data capture for end-of-year tracking and other projects. We therefore ask all members to:
- Ensure that Activity and Student information for the most recent academic year (2024/2025) is entered into the system by Friday 29th August 2025
- Check, and if necessary clean, all Student and Activity record data for the most recent academic year (2024/2025), and complete all Student Duplicate and Retention cleaning by Friday 31st October 2025
- Fixed and final deadline for all HEAT Track data to be extracted by Friday 28th November 2025
For more information about the deadlines, please read the Data Cleaning and Management User Guide on File Store (members only).
Important note on the Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 Track
At the end of November, the Data Team will extract any eligible Students who took their Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 exams in 2025, and the Activities they participated in, and send these to the Department for Education for tracking. This exam year extract will only take place once and the data sent for tracking will become static, meaning any changes made to the Student or Activity records that take place after this extract has occurred will not be included as the deadline will have passed.
For this reason, we recommend data entry and cleaning is completed by the above deadlines to allow ample time to ensure all eligible Students and Activities for the latest exam cohort are submitted for tracking successfully.
Preparing your Student and Activity data for tracking
Clean Student data is essential for accurate internal and national reporting, including tracking into Key Stage 4, Key Stage 5, and higher education. Our Data Management and Cleaning User Guide provides information 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 meet the eligibility criteria and are marked as ‘Complete’ in the General tab.
Preparing your Ambassador data for tracking
If you would like to include Ambassador records for tracking into higher education through the next HESA Track cycle, please ensure the following eligibility criteria is met:
- Ambassador record is ‘Complete’ (General tab)
- Permission to Track is ‘Yes’ (Privacy tab)
- Record State is ‘Current’ (Audit tab)
Database Features and Tools to support Data Cleaning
- The Activity Clean search filters, available in the User Guide (members only) 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 (members only) 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 HESA Track. Search for Students by their ‘Expected HE Entry Year’ using the available filter on the database (members only)
- Check the Retention Tool (members only) for any Students who need to be deleted from the database, according to the HEAT Retention Policy (see Section 9. of the HEAT Privacy Notice for information in the first instance, and Section 12 of the HEAT Data Protection Policy for the 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 would recommend reviewing the Student HESA Tracking tab (members only) 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 (members only). If you would like further guidance regarding the cleaning process, please contact HEAT Support.
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