Feb. 16 2024
Source Page: GLD welcomes students from Sutton Trust Pathways to Law programmeFound: GLD welcomes students from Sutton Trust Pathways to Law programme
May. 14 2024
Source Page: Student visa: Views of students and higher education institutionsFound: Student visa: Views of students and higher education institutions
Written Evidence Apr. 16 2024
Inquiry: Impact of industrial action on university studentsFound: IUS0027 - Impact of industrial action on university students Durham University Written Evidence
Written Evidence Mar. 19 2024
Inquiry: Impact of industrial action on university studentsFound: IUS0025 - Impact of industrial action on university students Newcastle University Written Evidence
We want the Government to make it so students are allowed to use the internet for research during exams.
Found: In real life most people have access to the internet, so we don't see why students should have to remember
Written Evidence May. 23 2024
Inquiry: International students in English universitiesFound: ISU0010 - International students in English universities Campaign for Science and Engineering Written
Oral Evidence Apr. 24 2024
Inquiry: Misogyny in musicFound: CIISA, Office for Students, and CIISA Oral Evidence
Asked by: Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the total number of individual named (1) current, and (2) former, students' records held by the Department for Education collected in equality monitoring, broken down by (a) religious affiliation, (b) sexual orientation, (c) gender identity, and (d) disability.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA – now part of Jisc), is responsible for collecting and publishing data on the UK’s higher education (HE) sector. The latest published statistics refer to the 2021/22 academic year.
The department holds individual-level HESA data for all HE students in each academic year from 1995/96 to 2021/22. From 1998/99, the students are able to be identified by name.
The HESA data includes information on student’s disability status, religion or belief, gender identity and sexual orientation, although, gender identity, sexual orientation and religion or belief (for English, Scottish and Welsh HE providers) were not collected prior to 2012/13. Note that gender identity differs to biological sex which has been collected across all academic years since 1995/96.
The estimated figures below are derived by counting every student that started a HE course in the UK since 1999/2000, as well as the total number of enrolments (entrants and continuing students) in the academic year 1998/99. The figures exclude students with a missing first and last name, but includes students who are not part of the standard registration population. Therefore, these figures will differ from HESA’s publications. Additionally, students that disclose sensitive characteristics for the first time in any year after their first year of study are not counted under the estimated number of students with known sensitive characteristics, and students that have started more than one course since 1998/99 are counted once for each enrolment.
The department is estimated to hold the names of 28,927,337 students that started a HE course in the UK between 1998/99 and 2021/22. For 27,424,867 of these names, the department holds information on at least one of the following sensitive characteristics - disability status, religion or belief, gender identity or sexual orientation.
Of the estimated 28,927,337 names held by the department, 27,373,886 (95%) of them have a known disability status, 7,403,109 (26%) have a known religion or belief, 6,164,770 (21%) have a known gender identity and 6,388,972 (22%) have a known sexual orientation.
Student numbers broken down by personal characteristics over time are available through HESA’s open data pages, which can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb265/figure-5. HESA’s publication archive for earlier years can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/publications.
While individual identifiers are retained by the department for matching purposes, at all times the department will minimise the processing of, and access to, instant or meaningful identifiers. Access to named data within the department is restricted to a small number of data professionals with responsibility for matching this data with other sources and creating pseudonymised, or aggregated, versions of the data which are subsequently used for research and statistics.
Written Evidence May. 23 2024
Inquiry: International students in English universitiesFound: ISU0007 - International students in English universities Institute for Social and Economic Research,
Asked by: Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of findings from a recent IDP Connect survey which found that nearly half of prospective students surveyed were reconsidering or unsure of their plans to study in the UK following changes in policy and rules regarding international students.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government seeks to ensure that there is a fair and robust migration policy while maintaining the UK’s place as a top destination for the best and brightest students from around the world. The department remains committed to the ambitions set out in the government’s International Education Strategy to host 600,000 international students per year and to increase the value of our education exports to £35 billion per year, both by 2030.
The department expects the UK to remain a highly attractive study destination. The UK has four universities in the top 10, and 17 in the top 100. The UK has a highly sought after higher education (HE) experience, which is respected by students across the globe. The department is hugely proud to have met its international student recruitment ambition two years running, with 679,970 international students studying at a UK university in 2021/22.
However, the level of legal migration remains too high. As a result, on 4 December 2023, the government announced a new package of measures to reduce net migration and curb the abuse and exploitation of the country’s immigration system. The department continues to work closely with the Home Office, the Department for Business and Trade, and other governmental departments to assess the impact of these changes on HE providers.
HE providers are autonomous bodies, independent of government. As such, they are responsible for their own admission decisions. The government takes a close interest in ensuring that the HE admissions system is fair and works closely with HE providers and sector bodies to make sure the system works well for students.