I was rung by Karen Bayne.

She stated they wanted to produce an article responding to 'Blunkett's
recent statement'.  She said what she was after was information about
the 'leaver (no return)' percentage on the provisional HEFCE statistics.
She said she knew the figure was 7.5% for the sector average (and either
stated or implied that HEFCE had confirmed that).  She claimed other
institutions had provided this statistic and wanted to know why we
weren't prepared to be open about it - "what did we have to hide?"  type
of questions.  She left a message with our Vice Chancellor saying that
the Planning Office were refusing to supply information.

I said that the HEFCE figures were not finalised - that we knew the
methodology had some weaknesses eg in relation to year 0 students, of
whom we have a lot, and that for a number of reasons it would be revised
shortly.  I also said that HEFCE were only planning on publishing them
in a context that gave other information about institutional profiles.
I freely admitted that we were above the sector average, which I put
down to our access policy of recruiting local, mature and weaker (A
level points wise) students, but refused to be drawn on our actual
figure.

I also explained that the 'leave (no return)' HEFCE category includes
all those students who pop up in later years in other institutions, and
explained that as a result of our policy and strong support for credit
transfer we would expect that and regarded it as a success factor rather
than an indication of failure.  It also includes those students who
leave with an intermediate qualification, which again we did not regard
as an absolute negative.

She asked about failures and I said I was willing to check how many of
our 'leave (no return)' were due to academic failure.  I did that by
matching HEFCE 'leave (no return)' category on the file they sent
against the RSNLEAVE code '02' on the HESA return for the same year.  I
said that that was 3.5%, which seemed very reasonable and that the the
majority of our 'leave (no return)' were for reasons not connected with
academic failure, such as health, financial, personal and lots of
'other'.  On being asked about financial problems, I explained that the
evidence in our institution was that recent financial problems
encountered by students may be influencing non-completion but that it
was rarely in such a direct way and that there are many complex and
inter-related reasons why students leave without completing.  I referred
her in the direction of the research reports published by HEFCE on
student non-completion researched by Mantz Yorke at John Moores
University and Jenny Ozga at Keele University.  She seemed unaware of
them.

I also explained that we believed that it was not helpful to just look
at one year (1994-95) in isolation, and that we believed that many of
the students who left us for reasons not connected with academic
failure, would probably return to the HE system, if not our institution,
at some point in the future and that you had to look at longer term
trends.

Having said of all of this, I did say that I believed HE institutions
were concerned about the effect of non-completion and that we were all
looking at ways of reducing this, but that academic standards had to be
maintained and many of the other factors, eg student finance, are
largely outside of the control of institutions.

Goodness knows what she'll make of it and what they'll write, but I made
sure I didn't give the HEFCE figure!!!

I would have rather spent the time doing analysis on the DFEE letter to
HEFCE published on the web (www.hefce.ac.uk) on Wednesday, but only got
round to that this morning - and that is much more interesting!  See
especially paragraph 47:

"47. The Secretary of State wishes to see rapid progress made by the
Performance Indicators Steering Group in developing indicators at a
sectoral and institutional level, including indicators on employment
outcomes which will better inform the choice of prospective students. He
looks forward to receiving the Steering Group+s report early in the new
year on which performance indicators will be produced and when
publication will take place. As noted above, performance indicators
relating to employment outcomes should take effect in 2000. "

So if it's not the Sunday Times hassling us, we can be sure HEFCE and
the DFEE will be publishing data on us!!

Mike Milne-Picken
Head of Planning
University of Central Lancashire




 ---------
* From: Barry Jackson
* To: [log in to unmask]
* Subject: Sunday Times
* Date: 11 December 1998 15:30
*
* I've picked up your messages about the Sunday Times.  I wanted to let
* you know that the following is the advice we have circulated to press
* officers:
*
* I've now talked to ST (Judith O'Reilly).  She's not clear about what
* story they are trying to develop - 'looking for ideas'.  I have
* expressed our collective frustration at dealing with unfocussed
* requests, particularly at short notice.
*
* _______________________________________________
*
* There is currently no standard method of calculating student 'drop
out'
* rates in higher education. HEFCE are developing a methodology and
* figures should be available next year.
*
* Any figures currently in circulation are likely to be highly
misleading.
*
* The figures circulated to institutions by HEFCE earlier this year were
* their first stab at developing meaningful data.  They did not make
them
* publicly available because they were aware that, being a first stab,
* they were likely to be wrong, and wanted to give institutions a chance
* to comment.
*
* Feedback from institutions showed that they needed to amend their
* methodology, so they are now doing that.
*
* Moreover, HEFCE now have statistics for the year following that on
which
* the circulated figures were based, and will be using these as the base
* for their next calculation.
*
* The plan is to publish average sector-wide statistics in the early New
* Year (at least for English institutions), using their revised
* methodology and base, and to circulate revised institutional figures
for
* further checking.  We are discussing with HEFCE how this can best be
* handled, media-wise.
*
* So publication of any of the figures circulated earlier in the year is
* likely to be as misleading as any other figures.
*
* Moreover the figures are only about full-time undergraduates.  (HEFCE
is
* looking at the possibility of calculating module completion rates for
* part-time students next year, but this is at an early stage)
*
* It's up to each institution to decide whether it wants to offer
figures
* to the Sunday Times, given the above.
*
* Hope this helps
*
* Barry
*
*
* 


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