Data Collection

The information presented in this statistical bulletin is based on data supplied by Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), now part of Jisc, the Designated Data Body for HE in England. HESA collects information from all publicly funded universities throughout Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and Higher Education (HE) providers in England registered with the Office for Students (OfS) in the Approved (fee cap) or Approved categories. These are collectively called Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the context of this bulletin. The HESA data presented in this bulletin relate to Higher Level Apprenticeship students at NI HEIs and, therefore, do not include HLAs offered at FE colleges in NI or the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE). The Higher Level Apprenticeships data included in this publication are a subset of the Higher Education Institutions: Northern Ireland Analysis

New HESA Data Futres Collection System

The 2022/23 HESA Student Record was the first to be collected using a newly developed data submission platform and data model, delivered by the ‘Data Futures’ transformation programme. Although ultimately successful in delivering a comprehensive set of data on higher education students across the UK, submitting HE providers and HESA/Jisc experienced a greater number of challenges during the collection process than had been the case in recent years.

A comprehensive quality assessment has been undertaken on the dataset and this is detailed in HESA’s 2022/23 Student Data Quality Report. A detailed list of findings is available in HESA’s Data Quality and Insights resource, which is also accompanied by provider specific data notes.

Overall, the conclusions from the HESA quality assessment of 2022/23 student data suggest a picture of limited impact of quality issues at the level of the aggregated data used in the top level variables and trend data provided in this bulletin.

The most common type of quality issues identified in the 2022/23 HESA student data relate to increases in the proportions of unknown values appearing in particular data ‘fields’. HESA indicate that the quality issues can become more impactful in specific areas as one examines more disaggregated and detailed data, particularly at the level of some individual HE providers across the UK, but we are not aware of any significant impact on NI providers top level data.

Funding

This publication reports on Department for the Economy (DfE) funded Higher Level Apprenticeships students at NI HEIs. All HLAs reported on in the publication are funded through Government training programmes.

Data Rounding

To prevent the identification of individuals, figures throughout the report are rounded to the nearest 5, with 0, 1, and 2 rounded to 0. Due to rounding, the sum of numbers in each row or column may not match the total shown. Percentages are calculated on rounded data and are rounded to the nearest integer. This means percentages may not sum exactly to 100%.

Definitions

Academic Year

The academic year runs from 1st August to 31st July.

Age

Age for enrolment reporting is as at 31st August, based on the start date of the reported academic year. Age for qualifiers is as at 31st July, based on the end of the academic year.

Domicile

Domicile refers to a student’s permanent place of residence prior to enrolment on a course. Those with unknown domicile are included in total figures, but not in all breakdowns in this publication and associated tables. Only NI domicile students are included in Deprivation Quintile, Local Government District and Parliamentary Constituency tables. Information on religion, marital status and dependents is only collected for NI domiciled students studying at NI HE institutions.

Multiple Deprivation Measure (MDM)

The analysis presented in section 3- Multiple Deprivation Measure utilises five groups (quintiles) of Super Output Areas (SOAs) across NI. These five groups are determined based on relative level of deprivation using the NI Multiple Deprivation Measure (NI MDM) 2017.

SOAs ranked 1 to 178 form the most deprived quintiles relative to all other SOAs. Those ranked 713 to 890 are the most affluent relative to all other SOAs. SOA is determined using the valid postcode provided on the enrolment record.

NI MDM 2017 is a weighted combination of the seven domains of deprivation. The Income and Employment Deprivation domains account for nearly 50% of the multiple deprivation measure. The Health and Disability Domain, and Education, Skills and Training Deprivation Domain combined account for a further 30%, and the remainder is made up of the Access to Services, Living Environment and Crime and Disorder Domains.

For further details on deprivation measurement in NI please follow this link: Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure 2017

Section 75 categories

Equality related data, such as religion brought up, disability and ethnicity, are self-reported by the student during the data capture process within Higher Education Institutions.

hives.gov.uk/ukgwa/+/www.ofqual.gov.uk/research-and-statistics/statistics/429-sector-subject-area-classification-system-ssac)

Sex Indicator

From 2022/23, the sex identifier (SEXID) field includes the new categories ‘information refused’ and ‘not available’, as well as ‘female’, ‘male’ and ‘other’. In addition, the published coding guidance on use of the ‘other’ SEXID category has been clarified; this code should only be used only for a third sex that is legally recognised by another country. However, the data suggests that the categories of ‘other’, ‘information refused’ and ‘not available’ have often not been applied correctly or consistently in the data submissions from HE providers in the 2022/23 student data collection. For this reason, and due to small numbers and issues of disclosure, students of ‘other’ sex, ‘information refused’ and ‘not available’ are included in total figures, but not in separate breakdowns in this publication and associated tables.

Starts

The HEI HLA students who joined an HLA programme in the reported academic year.

STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths Qualifications

The STEM groupings used in this bulletin are based on the approach developed by HESA to categorise subjects into science/non-science subjects. Their science grouping is an aggregation of relevant CAH v1.3.4 level 1 subject codes (derived from HECoS), with the exception of CAH26 (Geography, earth and environmental studies), which has been split into natural sciences and social sciences. The natural science element is categorised into the science grouping and the social sciences element into the non-science grouping.

Narrow STEM includes the following subject areas: Biological and sport sciences; Psychology; Physical sciences; Mathematical sciences; Engineering and technology; Computing; and Geography, earth and environmental studies (natural sciences).

Broad STEM includes all those in Narrow STEM along with the following: Medicine and dentistry; Subjects allied to medicine; Veterinary sciences; Agriculture, food and related studies; and Architecture, building and planning.

Subject coding

Subject coding - 2019/20 saw the introduction of a new subject coding system, the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS). This replaced the previous subject coding system, the Joint Academic Coding System (JACS) used in years prior to 2019/20. In addition to HECoS, a Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH) was introduced to provide a standardised hierarchical aggregation of HECoS codes suitable for the majority of users. The CAH was developed to provide standard groupings that could be applied to both HECoS and JACS allowing for consistent analysis across coding frames. It is important to remember though that these are two distinct coding frames.

CAH was subsequently updated from version 1.2 to version 1.3.4 in 2020/21, which has resulted in some minor changes to the categories. CAH v1.3.4 was introduced to increase the usefulness and intelligibility of detailed subject groupings, but at the highest level of aggregation it provides similar insights to CAH v1.2. For more information, please refer to HESA’s webpage