A series of webinars covering key data fields for higher education students in the Individualised Learner Record (ILR).
There are many common misunderstandings in how the higher education data in the Individualised Learner Record (ILR) should be reported and for many further education colleges the use of ILR data by the Office for Students remains a mystery.
This series of six webinars will provide:
- explanations of how the data should be returned
- information on the key ILR fields used by the OfS and how they are used
- best practice and suggestions for systems and processes.
Week four: Student engagement part one
This webinar looked at student engagement. It covered:
- definitions of key fields:
- LearnStartDate
- LearnPlanEndDate
- LearnActEndDate
- MODESTUD
- STULOAD
- what we use these for
- what we expect from providers in determining these
- evidence that should be kept
- common issues found
- examples
- improving data quality.
Watch the webinar
See the slides
Questions and answers
Questions and answers from the session are provided below.
This is not the case, you will still be required to return MODESTUD until there is definite confirmation.
Section 5.4.1, paragraphs 424 to 430, of the Provider Support Manual 2019 to 2020 provides details on how the ILR data should be returned for students that take a break in learning.
Paragraph 430 states that once the learner returns to learning, you will need to re-plan the delivery of any remaining training and/or assessment. A new programme aim (if required), learning aim(s), new planned end date should be created and the original learning aims must not be reopened.
Section 5.5.1, paragraphs 459 to 461, of the Provider Support Manual 2019 to 2020 provides guidance on recording retakes and resits.
For a student to be classed as full-time they must meet the all three of the following criteria:
- they are normally required to attend for at least 24 weeks within the year of instance
- during which they are expected to undertake periods of study of on average at least 21 hours per week
- full-time fees are chargeable for the course for the year.
The full definition is in Annex H of HESES19.
If they do not meet any one of these conditions then they should be returned as part-time but may still have an full-time equivalence (FTE) of one.
STULOAD should be returned to reflect the proportion of activity they undertook compared to the full year. The number of weeks that the student studied for before withdrawing can be used to calculate this proportion.
No, STULOAD does not refer to year of instance. STULOAD is capturing the activity undertaken in the ILR reporting year, 1 August to 31 July.
Therefore, in this example if the student studies from January to December for two years their STULOAD should be split appropriately across the three ILR reporting years that they fall within, for example:
- ILR year one: STULOAD = 50 (the first half of year one)
- ILR year two: STULOAD = 100 (the second half of year one and the first half of year two)
- ILR year three: STULOAD = 50 (the second half of year two).
Yes, STULOAD is required for all students studying at Level 4 and above to allow us to calculate OfS registration fees.
Details on the students we count for these purposes can be found on our student numbers webpages.
Details of the student's learning aim, mode of study, length of course, and start and end dates of the student's years are all really good pieces of information to help provide evidence for a student's STULOAD.
Where you have had to adjust the standard STULOAD, for withdrawals or part-time students, you should keep an audit trail of the calculation used to determine the STULOAD.
If you have any questions about the ILR webinar series, please contact [email protected].
See the ILR specification, validation rules and appendices 2019 to 2020.
See our privacy notice for OfS Zoom webinars.