It is coming, and people would really like you to be ready
From 2028-29 UK higher education providers will make mandatory in-year student data returns via HESA.
This is, on one level, an overdue update to a sector data infrastructure that is unable to provide the information needed to understand the complex modern reality of delivering higher education with variable start points, intensity, and qualification types. The short courses delivered as part of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement funding stream represents just one of the more obvious challenges to a system that collects student data in November for the academic year that ended in August.
Like much in the data world, this won’t be a simple flipping of a switch. Each provider will have time, and support, to prepare far ahead of the first mandatory year: many teams within providers are already working with Jisc, HESA, and their student data system suppliers to build towards compliance.
While every provider does make day-to-day updates to their own student records (it is pretty much essential in running a higher education provider), this does not happen in the same way everywhere. It’s one of the many gifts given to us for sector autonomy – and it is why a commitment to carefully building the new return based on what we already know about making the once-a-year current version is so important.
Of course the quiet part that we will say out loud here is that twenty-five years ago the sector was making in-year student data returns – the “December” return was scrapped (because of administrative burden) back in 2001. That it has taken us this long to leverage decades of technical improvements and capacity-building in order to return to the turn-of-the-millenium state of the art is troubling.
The incoming HESA process will see the current annual data return (RP0 in the HESA argot) shift slowly backwards in the year. A series of iterative changes will see it reach mid-October by the time the mandatory in-year return starts in 2028-29 (and the unthinkable heights of 2 October by 2031).
That’s the final point for what will be the complete data for the year (1 August to 31 July). HESA is understandably hazy on what the other reference periods will be, but the suggestion is that – in the first mandatory year – there will be an additional reference period covering 1 August to some point in November (RP1). This would capture the initial autumn enrollments, with the main reference period returns conforming these figures and adding more data from starts in the later part of the year.
And there is no reason why we need to stop at two collections – it is not difficult to imagine, as providers become used to RP1, that we could add another return covering January starts. There’s been nothing announced along those lines, to be clear, though the OfS “statement of expectations” is pretty clear about the direction of travel.
As you might expect, HESA is very keen to bring the sector along with it in developing this new return: it is committed to communicating via the weekly update, and there are guidance and training materials on the way to support the way providers are preparing. As with any changes to data collection, its success relies on the diligence and capacity of the statutory returns team that lives in your academic registry.
Whatever regulatory compliance grumbles happen elsewhere in your provider, the line of communication between HESA and the specialists that prepare and submit data to HESA is generally supportive and driven by mutual respect (the Data Futures experience was so painful precisely because it deviates so sharply from the norm). HESA’s liaison team is in regular communication on queries and problems, there’s training for staff new to the statutory data world and guidance materials for every collection.
It is precisely because this system usually works so well that the appearance of a letter from in-year data sponsoring group chair Steve West addressed to accountable officers across the UK is rather surprising.
Accountable officers would generally get the top-line information on stuff like this – witness August’s note from interim OfS chief executive Josh Fleming, with the fine detail on implementation communicated to the staff who will be doing the work. That is the usual kind of call to engage: it notes the pressures on providers, but notes that this work is important and needs to be resourced (including with senior leadership oversight) appropriately.
West’s letter, on the face of it, runs along similar lines to Fleming’s. It’s a higher-level cheerleading operation that outlines the need for in-year data and makes it clear that institutions should be prepared to play along as the process is developed and refined. Accountable officers are urged – again – “to engage with the teams responsible for student records and data returns.”
Jisc (as named delivery organisation for the in-year data programme) does have the job of ensuring provider readiness – it is visible throughout the statement of expectations, alongside deeper interventions such as “escalation protocols” and “targeted support.” Could this swift restatement of a provider engagement message itself be an escalation protocol?
To me, the only reason to run a repeat two months later is that the message didn’t sink in the first time. Clearly somebody, somewhere, is not seeing the kind of senior engagement or resource prioritisation within providers that they are hoping for. Like Data Futures, this is a big shift in the work of those involved with student records, and – as didn’t quite happen in Data Futures – these people need to be empowered to do their job.