Interesting that the new National Statistics Neighbourhood Statistics web site contains HE information about UCAS applications and other data that is rounded to the nearest multiple of five. Some inconsistency between HESA and the Office of National Statistics here!
See:
www.statistics.gov.uk/neighbourhood
Mike Milne-Picken
Head of Planning & Performance Review
University of Central Lancashire
PRESTON
PR1 2HE
Tel: +44 (0)1772 892391
Fax: +44 (0)1722 892943
[log in to unmask]
www.uclan.ac.uk/planning
BTW the web site is a useful source of information currently based at local authority ward level. It's got dozens of pieces of data you can assemble for any area of the country you choose, including UCAS, employment, population and school data etc. Over time ONS will extend the range of data available and from 2003 the new census data will kick in. In the meantime you can identify 'deprived wards' and use UCAS entrants per head of population as a proxy for HE participation to build up a geographical picture of where participation strategies need to be targeted. (Unless of course you've got a share in the 18 million announced by HEFCE this week to go to institutions to shift their entrants from private to state schools - for that you just need the DfEE league tables of schools and colleges Average A level points score to target those with the highest average A level grades. The rest of us have to slave away reaching the parts that others don't reach!).
>>> [log in to unmask] 26 April 2001 16:54:59 >>>
Colleagues who are responding to this recent survey request from
Andy Youell at HESA may be interested to see the comment we
included in response to question 7. You may not have yet become
aware of this new 'feature' of the HESA Reference volume:
"We have recently received the HESA Students in Higher Education
Institutions volume for 1999/2000. It is with some concern that
we note the changes to the presentation of the data contained in
the tables, ie the suppression of numbers between one and nine
and the rounding of all other numbers to the nearest ten.
The changes to the tabulations are a consequence of the
provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights
Act 1998. We can understand the need for the suppression of
small numbers in the institution tables but we fail to see the
logic of this application to the UK-wide tables. We also do not
see how rounding of numbers to ten contributes to the prevention
of the disclosure of personal information about any individual.
The HESA volumes are a valuable tool for individual institutions
both for monitoring their own student profiles and those of other
institutions. Presenting the data in the new format no longer
makes this possible."
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Judy Evans
Head of Management Information
University of North London
166-220 Holloway Road
London N7 8DB
tel : 020 7753 5146
fax : 020 7753 5120
email : [log in to unmask]
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