Student Staff Ratios in Former Polytechnics and Colleges 1992-93 to 1993-94
Reference M 4/96
February 1996
The electronic version of this publication contains the Introduction and Background only. The complete printed document is available, priced £5.00 from HEFCE Publications.
Introduction
This document provides information on all staff end students in former PCFC funded institutions for the academic years 1992-93 and 1993-94. This is the last of the series on student to staff ratios in the former Polytechnics and Colleges and, like the others, takes the form of a written analysis of the data and an appendix of tables presenting the information upon which it is based.
Summary
There was a general increase in the student to teaching staff ratio (SSR) in many Academic Cost Centres (ACCs).
Several ACCs show an increase in the spread of SSRs.
There was a steady increase in the SSR for the HE sector. The increase in the FE sector was more erratic, perhaps as a result of these ratios being based on a much smaller volume of data.
A reduction in further education and an increase in higher education has taken place in ex-PCFC institutions since 1991-92.
The staff per 1000 student ratios decreased for most types of staff over the period covered in this report. Although this ratio increased slightly for hourly or fee paid teaching staff end demonstrators, the increase did not match the decrease in the ratio for fulltime teaching staff. This ratio decreased in the nonacademic areas too, dropping markedly for premises and residence, catering and other staff between 1991-92 and 1992-93.
Background
This document contains two years of data. By the time the 1992-93 data were finalised the 1993-94 data collection exercise was well on the way to being completed.
The data were collected from former PCFC institutions only, using the HEFCE Annual Record from Institutions of Staff and Students (HARISS). Students were defined as all those on awardbearing courses who were taught in an institution's academic departments. Readers are referred to the notes of guidance sent out with the survey for detailed definitions of the terms used. This report contains information on both HE and FE within the former PCFC sector.
In 1993 the publication of performance indicators and management statistics in HE came under the remit of the Joint Performance Indicators Working Group (JPWIG) who decided against the publication of SSRs. Their successor body the Higher Education Management Statistics (HEMS) group, which was set up in 1994, took the same view. The DfEE publish SSRs annually in their departmental report and are likely to continue to do so.
In keeping with past practice the following conversion factors were used to calculate the student FTEs:
HE: 0.9 for sandwich course (SW) enrolments,
0.4 for part-time (PT) enrolments,
FE: 0.7 for SW enrolments,
0.2 for PT enrolments.
The teaching staff were divided into full-time and hourly or fee paid staff according to their contracts. The full-time teaching staff FTEs include those employed FT for all or a part of the year and those employed part-time throughout the year on a proportion of a FT contract. The FTEs of hourly/fee paid teaching staff for each institution were calculated as in the previous report i.e. their pay expenditure relative to the average full-time pay expenditure.