15 June 2007

To	Heads of HEFCE-funded higher education institutions Heads of further education colleges with HE provision, directly or indirectly funded by HEFCE Heads of universities in Northern Ireland

Direct Line	0117 931 7300
Direct Fax	0117 931 7203

Circular letter number 17/2007

For further information contact Emma Creasey, tel 0117 931 7225, e-mail e.creasey@hefce.ac.uk

Dear Vice-Chancellor or Principal

Update on developments in Teaching Quality Information for HE delivered in FECs

1. I am writing to update you on the development of teaching quality information for higher education delivered in further education colleges (HE in FECs); and provide additional information on the extension of the National Student Survey (NSS) and Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey to include students studying HE in FECs.

2. This letter is mainly of interest to FECs with HE that is directly funded from HEFCE, and the developments in the NSS and DLHE survey apply only to students on directly-funded programmes of HE in FECs. For HEIs and for FECs with only indirectly-funded HE, the letter is only for information, although these institutions may wish to note progress regarding the presentation of data (paragraph 6).

Actions for institutions

3. FECs providing directly-funded higher education should:

Inform students on directly-funded HE programmes as soon as possible that their details may be supplied to HEFCE or its agents for the purposes of taking part in the National Student Survey; and that they may be contacted directly to take part in the NSS, by HEFCE's appointed agent (Ipsos MORI).
Make arrangements for providing student contact data. During autumn 2007, colleges should generate a list of students to be included in the NSS, using the web facility described in Annex G of HEFCE publication 2007/13, '2006-07 statistics derived from Individual Learner Record (ILR) data: guide to HEFCE web facility'. Contact data for these students should be completed and provided to Ipsos MORI in November 2007.
Note the proposal that, from 2008, FECs should provide data on student leavers from directly-funded programmes for the DLHE survey.

Background

4. See Annex A for the background to the work on developing teaching quality information (TQI) for HE in FECs. Annex B gives the composition of the TQI for HE in FECs steering group which is taking this work forward. The rest of this letter sets out developments following the consultation. These will be taken forward in tandem with HEFCE's ongoing review of policy regarding HE in FECs.

Progress on developing the TQI dataset for HE in FECs

5. We have established that initial work with the ILR data requires more work to ensure it resembles, and is as robust as, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data for higher education institutions (HEIs). In view of this, publication will be delayed until 2008.

6. The TQI for HE in FECs steering group acknowledges that relationships between awarding/franchising bodies and those institutions delivering courses may be complex and it will be difficult for the data to reflect this. The steering group is still considering how to present the data. It is recommending that data should be presented under the institution where the course is being delivered, where possible, as it considers this to be the simplest option from the point of view of potential students. However the group has agreed that all institutions involved in the HE in FECs arrangements should have the option of providing a commentary on the data.

7. The TQI/NSS steering group has recommended that the NSS and DLHE surveys should now be extended to include directly-funded HE students in FECs, including those in HEFCE recognised funding consortia.

Rolling out the NSS and DHLE survey to directly-funded HE in FECs

8. The results of the NSS and DLHE survey form an important part of the TQI dataset. The aim of the annual NSS is to gather feedback from final-year undergraduates on the quality of their courses. The NSS, which has run annually since 2005, is one of the most popular elements of the TQI web-site, with users commenting that this is useful information that cannot be found elsewhere. It has also gained a very high profile in the media. The DLHE survey collects information about patterns of graduates' employment and further study or training six months after they have completed their studies.

9. We are aiming to carry out the first student survey for directly-funded HE students studying at FECs in January-April 2008. The DLHE will need a longer timetable to set up; we would like to run the first survey in FECs in early 2009.

10. In taking these initiatives forward, we intend to mirror the process for HEIs as far as is possible.

National Student Survey

11. Including students currently registered on directly-funded HE programmes at FECs in the NSS will require HEFCE to generate lists of the students to be contacted and for the FECs to complete student contact details for return to the survey agency, Ipsos MORI. (Details include term-time postal addresses, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers.) This, of course, has data protection implications. Paragraph 30 of the financial memorandum between HEFCE and the institutions it funds (HEFCE 2006/24) states:

'Institutions will, from time to time, be asked to provide data that they have collected to HEFCE or to other bodies acting on the Council's behalf…These data will often contain personal details for students and/or staff. To ensure that institutions and the Council can fulfil their duties under the Data Protection Act 1998 (including advising data subjects about what data will be processed and the purpose), institutions should satisfy themselves when collecting data that students and/or staff are aware of these possible requirements and have given their consent.'

12. NSS data will be drawn from students in their penultimate year of study, with the survey itself carried out during the students' final year. NSS data will therefore appear as for the institution where the student spent their penultimate year of study.

13. Under the existing NSS timetable for HEIs, information is returned to Ipsos MORI by the end of November to inform the running of the survey in January. Currently HEFCE does not receive data from the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) until early December, so we would not be able to generate the target lists in time for January. We hope to be able to work with the LSC to resolve this, but for now HEFCE will generate the lists using the existing web facility. Therefore, during autumn 2007, FECs should generate a list of students to be included in the survey. This should be done through the web facility described at Annex G of HEFCE publication 2007/13, '2006-07 statistics derived from ILR data: guide to HEFCE web facility'. Completed lists need to be returned to Ipsos MORI in November 2007.

14. Institutions will therefore need to inform students on directly-funded HE programmes as soon as possible that their details may be supplied to HEFCE or its agents; and that they may be contacted directly to take part in the survey, by Ipsos MORI. Students may wish to look at www.thestudentsurvey.com to find out more about the survey.

Destination of Leavers from Higher Education Survey

15. The TQI for HE in FECs steering group strongly supported adopting the same collection cycle as that used in HEIs for the DLHE survey in FECs. This means that there will be two data collection tranches, the first tranche to cover students leaving between 1 August and 31 December and a second for those who complete their courses between 1 January and 31 July. A target list for the second tranche could potentially be generated from institutions' ILRF05 returns ¹. These are not due until the end of November, so we appreciate that this would give very little time for colleges to turn the data around for a January census date. However, the TQI for HE in FECs steering group has advised that this should be achievable provided that colleges are given sufficient notice.

16. The first tranche is rather more complex as there is no ILR return that covers leavers in the period August to December. Following advice from the steering group, we propose that colleges should draw their own sample for this tranche, starting in 2008. HEFCE will provide guidance on how to do this.

17. DHLE data is drawn from students in their final year of study, with the survey itself taking place six months after completion of studies.

18. Currently the DLHE survey for HEIs is administered by individual institutions, which then pass the data to HESA. Given the very small numbers of students at each FEC this approach is likely to be overly burdensome. Therefore we intend to commission an agency in summer 2008 to administer the DLHE centrally and pass the details to HEFCE to process.

Data thresholds

19. To be statistically robust, we need to set thresholds for the publication of data for the TQI, NSS and DLHE. While this should not be an issue for most of the 286 FECs offering HEFCE-funded HE, some colleges with very small HE student numbers may fall under these thresholds. Assuming we use the same thresholds for the HE in FEC surveys that we apply to HEIs, institutions will need a cohort of more than 30 students for their DHLE data to be published and more than 45 students for NSS data to be published. (These can be students on both directly- and indirectly-funded courses as data can be added together). However, those that come under the threshold can still benefit from the surveys. As long as at least 10 students respond, the survey results are provided to the institution to assist with their own work towards improving the student experience, via a separate web-site.

20. If you have any queries or concerns regarding this letter then please contact Emma Creasey (e.creasey@hefce.ac.uk; telephone 0117 931 7225).

Yours sincerely

Liz Beaty
Director (Learning and Teaching)

Note

1. FECs make five ILR returns to the LSC every year, numbered F01 to F05. Colleges which do not receive European Social Fund monies are only required to return three of these, F01, F04 and F05, so these are the collections which HEFCE will use in order to ensure that all data are included. F01 reflects data from 1 August to 1 November; F04 shows data for the whole academic year, but does not include data on qualification outcomes; F05 shows data for the whole year including outcomes.