Whilst there was some potentially good news, I think we would all welcome the
end of the December return with a great deal of joy, there were some other
points in the presentation which left me feeling decidedly unhappy.
Various stats were rolled out about the data collection process.
For example there is a significant rise in activity on the closing day for
submitting files but relatively little activity on the days before that, (the
underlying thought seemed to be that we all sit on our hands until the last
moment).
It was also said that 20% of INSERT transactions fail, (the assumption being
made by the HESA people was that we doidn't bother to run it through the
validation kits before submitting). Now I don't know about anyone else but we
always ensure the record is clean before submission, there is no point doing
anything else. So, to me, it would seem that the problems lie in the
validation kits.
Another stat bandied around was that about 80% of institutions decommitted. On
the one hand we were being told to commit early so that the more detailed
validation could be done and on the other hand we seemed to be being chastised
for not having the data complete before committing it, bit difficult if you
have a lot of late awards as we do.
It also seems unclear to me why HESA cannot tell us what the COMMIT validation
actually checks as I suspect we could do some of this on our systems in
advance.
I know some of these points were taken up during the discussion afterwards,
which I missed as I went to another session, but yet again one came away with
the feeling that there is no recognition that most of us are working under
increasing pressure to deliver countless different things, usually with the
same or less resource to do it.
Rant over
regards
David Ealey
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David Ealey
Head of Student Records & Awards
University of North London
166-220 Holloway Road
London
N7 8DB
Phone 020 7753 3252 (Internal 2863)
e-mail [log in to unmask]
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