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Report 99/11

February 1999

Performance Indicators in Higher Education

First Report of the Performance Indicators Steering Group (PISG)

 

This document contains the Contents and Summary only. The full report is available in Word or RTF formats.

Contents

Summary

Background
Principles and procedures
Stakeholders
Priorities and progress

Performance indicators for higher education
Comparing institutions

Performance indicators for learning and teaching by institution
Access, progression, outcomes and efficiency
Indicators of access
Student progression
Outcomes
Learning efficiency
Module completion for part-time students
Employability and post-qualification outcomes

Performance indicators for learning and teaching for the sector
Indicators of access
Student progression
Outcomes
Learning efficiency
Employability and post-qualification outcomes

Performance indicators for research by institution
Research Assessment Exercise
Annual indicators based on HESA data

Performance indicators for research for the sector
Research Assessment Exercise
Annual indicators based on HESA data
Bibliometrics

Performance indicators for wealth generation

 

Annex A : General issues concerning performance indicators
Multiple outputs
Input measures
Sector level indicators and benchmarks
Other issues

Annex B: Considerations in drawing up performance indicators for learning and teaching
Standards
Measures of process

Annex C: Learning and teaching performance indicators technical notes
Adjusted sector benchmarks
Access and participation
Progression, outcome and learning efficiency indicators
Indicators of employment outcomes

Annex D: Research performance indicators - technical notes
The RAE
Measuring input to research
Measuring research output
Standardising for subject variation
Measures of coverage
Bibliometrics

Annex E: Summary of indicators and context statistics

Summary

  1. Following the recommendations of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, the Government asked the funding councils to develop suitable indicators and benchmarks of performance in the higher education sector. The Performance Indicators Steering Group was established, with membership drawn from government departments, the funding councils and representative bodies.
  2. The group set clear priorities for the first phase of its work. Initially, it was agreed that only the requirements of government, funding councils and the management and governance of institutions would be explicitly considered, although it was recognised that any performance indicators developed for these requirements would be of interest to a wider audience. To ensure that results would be available as soon as possible, the group took a pragmatic approach, identifying areas where the technical and interpretative difficulties were smallest, and the value and interest in indicators were greatest.
  3. The group was very conscious of the work of the Higher Education Management Statistics Group (HEMS) which publishes a wide range of management statistics at both the sector and the institution level. While not claiming to be performance indicators, these statistics provide a wealth of information about the sector over a wide range of aspects, and enable monitoring of changes from year to year. The work of the PISG complements that of the HEMS group, though there are some areas where we have borrowed from their work.
  4. As far as performance indicators are concerned, different stakeholders will regard different indicators as particularly important. The Group’s approach has been to develop indicators which will allow stakeholders to extract those which they regard as key and to create their own group of key indicators. The Group commends this approach because of the considerable diversity of the HE sector, both in terms of the missions of institutions, the range of activities undertaken and the nature of their student populations.
  5. Of the wide range of outputs from higher education, the group identified measures of performance relating to:
    • learning and teaching of students
    • extension of knowledge through research
    • application of the knowledge and resources of higher education to the needs of business and of society more generally.
  6. Detailed proposals for PIs have been prepared relating to:
    1. Widening Participation of under-represented groups
    2. Student progression
    3. Learning outcomes (including non-completion)
    4. Efficiency of learning and teaching
    5. Student employment
    6. Research output
    7. HE links with industry.

    Both sector-level and institution-level indicators are proposed under each of these heads, except the last, where only sector-level indicators are proposed.

  7. The group was aware of the need to place such indicators in the context of the institution’s circumstances, and to take account of the diversity of the sector. For all the institution-level indicators, therefore, a set of context statistics is provided. In particular, for each relevant indicator concerned with learning and teaching an ‘adjusted sector outcome’ figure is computed for each institution. This takes account of the intake of students to the institution, their educational backgrounds and the subject mix of that institution. This enables the results for any institution to be compared not with all the other institutions in the sector, but with the average for similar institutions. Such context statistics are designed both to help assess an institution's performance, and to help select comparable institutions with which it is sensible to make comparisons. A list of the indicators and context statistics is set out at Annex E of the report.
  8. Institutions will be consulted in the spring of 1999 and publication of the indicators will follow, in part depending on the comments received. If all goes to plan this will be later in 1999.
  9. The priority for the next stage will be to consider the needs of other stakeholders, particularly prospective students and their advisers. Research into what information students need to make the right choice of higher education institution (commissioned by the CVCP, UCAS, the HEFCE and others) will be published early in 1999. The findings of the DfEE Student Information Needs group will also be available at about the same time. In his pre-Budget report, the Chancellor of the Exchequer drew attention to a need for improved performance indicators on employment outcomes, which would better inform the choice of prospective students. The PISG has already begun to look at this issue, and the publication of such indicators is planned for 2000.