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 six: Fees and financial support
This webinar looked at fees and financial support. It covered:
- definitions of key fields:
- SSN
- MSTUFEE
- GROSSFEE and NETFEE
- FINTYPE and FINAMOUNT
- SPECFEE
- 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.
The ILR is a collection owned by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) from which the OfS derives information and it is important for providers to read the guidance issued by the ESFA. The ILR specification and guidance is available on GOV.UK.
Recordings of these webinars covering data on higher education students in the ILR, the slides and questions and answers are available from the events pages of our website for you to look back on.
The OfS collects aggregate student data from further education colleges each year through the Higher Education Students Early Statistics (HESES) collection. It includes important definitions of key concepts which need to be understood before collating the data. Guidance on this collection is available from the HESES page of our website.
The full list of data requirements for further education colleges as at 27 August 2020 can be found in schedule 1 of our 30 July 2020 letter to accountable officers. The schedule gives details of where to find guidance on each data return so this document is a good place to start if you want a broad understanding of all of the data requirements.
Of particular note is guidance and templates on access and participation plans which providers in the Approved (fee cap) category must provide.
If in doubt providers should seek definitive guidance from the Student Loan Company and the ESFA in respect of individual student’s entitlement to student support.
Usually no. It should only be amended if the student was initially charged an incorrect fee, resulting in a refund. The correct value of GROSSFEE and NETFEE should be returned as soon as the error is noticed. GROSSFEE and NETFEE should not be reduced to reflect refunds of fees for students who withdraw, for example.
Remember that if a student has a student support number (SSN) then it is sufficient to return that and not GROSSFEE and NETFEE.
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.