Guide to performance indicators in higher education
What is the benchmark?
Because there are such differences between institutions, the average values for the whole of the higher education sector are not necessarily helpful when comparing HEIs. We have therefore calculated a sector average for each institution, which takes into account some of the factors which contribute to differences between them. The factors allowed for are:
- subject of study
- qualifications on entry
- age on entry (young or mature).
The average adjusted for these factors is called the adjusted sector benchmark. For some of the access indicators, we have also allowed for which region of the country the student comes from, and produced what we have called location-adjusted benchmarks.
For the employment indicator, a more complex benchmark is used which takes account of a wider range of factors. Fuller details are given in HEFCE 2003/??.
The benchmark can be used in two ways:
To see how well an HEI is performing compared to the HE sector as a whole. For most purposes, it is preferable to compare the institution’s indicator to its benchmark, rather than to the (unadjusted) sector average. When there is a significant difference between the HEI’s performance and the benchmark, we have marked it with a symbol. A ‘plus’ symbol is used for institutions performing better than the benchmark and a ‘minus’ symbol for those performing worse.
To decide whether to compare two institutions. It is hard to meaningfully compare two institutions that are very different. For example, an institution where most students enter with very good A-level qualifications should not usually be compared with one whose students come from a wider range of educational backgrounds. Similarly, a medical school and a college that mainly concentrates on engineering subjects are not comparable, as medical students have much lower non-completion rates than engineering students. If two institutions have very different benchmarks, this is an indication that they are so different that comparing them would not give a helpful answer. But note that if two institutions have very different location-adjusted benchmarks, this may just show that they recruit from different regions of the UK.
Last updated 11 December 2003