HESA student data collection notice

HESA shares your HESA information with the HE funding and regulatory body(s) who request HESA to collect it and require it to carry out their statutory and/or public functions. This data sharing is carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in HESA and the funding and regulatory bodies. HESA has been appointed as the designated data body for England under the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. The HE funding and regulatory bodies are:

• England - Office for Students (who take into account what would be helpful to collect for sharing with UK Research and Innovation and the Secretary of State)
• Wales - Higher Education Funding Council for Wales
• Scotland - Scottish Funding Council
• Northern Ireland - Department for the Economy

Your HESA information will be shared with these organisations as part of a large dataset which contains similar information about other people who have followed higher education courses in the UK. These organisations are also Controllers of your HESA information. This means that they make their own decisions about how to use it, and this may include publishing statistics, carrying out quality assurance, and sharing the information with third parties, such as other government or public bodies or other organisations of the type listed elsewhere in this collection notice. However, all uses of your HESA information are within the purposes set out in this collection notice and covered by data sharing agreements with HESA.

These organisations may retain HESA information indefinitely for statistical and research purposes.

Education statistics and data

HESA also acts as an information hub to provide information on higher education. In England, this is undertaken outside of HESA’s designated data body activities. HESA shares your HESA information with public authorities who require it to carry out their statutory and/or public functions. This data sharing is carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in HESA and the public authorities. Your HESA information will be shared with these organisations as part of a large dataset which contains similar information about other people who have followed higher education courses in the UK.

These organisations are data controllers in common of your HESA information. This means that they make their own decisions about how to use it, and this may include publishing statistics and sharing the information with third parties, such as other government or public bodies or other organisations of the type listed elsewhere in this collection notice. However, all uses that they make of your HESA information will be within the purposes set out in this collection notice and covered by data sharing agreements with HESA. These organisations will not use the data for the purposes of identifying you as an individual or to take decisions about you, except as described in Purpose 3 below. These organisations may retain HESA information indefinitely for statistical and research purposes, or for fixed terms depending on the terms of their data sharing agreements with HESA.

Such organisations may include:

• Department for Education
• Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
• Welsh Government
• Scottish Government
• Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland
• Office for Students (formerly HEFCE)
• Higher Education Funding Council for Wales
• Scottish Funding Council
• UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Research England
• Teaching Regulation Agency
• National Health Service bodies and organisations working with them e.g. Health Education England
• General Medical Council
• UCAS
• Office of National Statistics

and any successor bodies. Further data controllers may be added to the list from time to time – please see the online version of this notice.

HUSID look-up service – If you have been included in the Student record in previous years, your current higher education provider may use HESA’s look-up service to validate your student identifier (referred to as your HUSID).

Changing provider during your higher education studies – If during your study with a higher education provider, you transfer to another higher education provider or your course is delivered in collaboration with another higher education provider, it may be necessary for HESA to share information about you with your new provider to ensure you are correctly included in their relevant data submission to HESA. HESA may also be required to inform your previous provider that you are now studying elsewhere.

External Administrative Uses

In the exercise of their official authority, it may be necessary for the UK higher education funding and regulatory bodies listed in Purposes 1 and 2 to use your HESA information which is passed to them for Purposes 1 and 2 to identify you and take decisions about you as an individual for the following purposes only:

Fraud detection and prevention - Your HESA information may be used to audit claims to public funding and student finance, and to detect and prevent fraud.

Previous study - As your higher education provider is in England: The Office for Students (formerly HEFCE) may share your previous education records with this provider, including HESA information submitted by other higher education providers, to determine the nature of any prior higher education study, including your current qualifications. This may be used to make decisions about the fees you are required to pay the support available to you or the availability of a place for you to study with City, University of London.

For these purposes your HESA information may be held separately (in addition to being held within datasets for Purpose 1) and retained for as long as necessary for the purposes of detection or prosecution of fraud and any associated legal or audit purposes.

Part of HESA’s role is to produce and publish information about higher education in the public interest. This includes Official and National Statistics publications and online business intelligence and research services.

When producing this material for publication, HESA applies its disclosure control, the HESA Standard Rounding Methodology, to ensure that no Personal Data is included and that individuals cannot be identified from published material.

HESA and the other data controllers in common (see Purpose 1 & 2) may also supply information to third parties where there is a legitimate interest in doing so for statistical and research purposes. Examples of use for this purpose include:

• Provision of information to students and prospective students
• Equal opportunities monitoring
• Research - This may be academic research, commercial research or other statistical research where this is in the public interest
• Journalism - Where the relevant publication would be in the public interest e.g. league tables
• Creation and operation of analysis tools, for example, Heidi Plus.

Users to whom information may be supplied for Purpose 5 include:

• Higher education sector bodies including Jisc
• Higher education providers
• Academic researchers and students
• Commercial organisations (e.g. recruitment firms, housing providers, graduate employers)
• Unions
• Non-governmental organisations and charities
• Local, regional and national government bodies
• Journalists

Information supplied by HESA, via JISC to third parties within Purpose 5 is supplied under contracts which require that individuals shall not be identified from the supplied information and this means that they also cannot use it to make decisions about you.

A copy of these agreement for the supply of tailored information is available here. Each agreement specifies the duration for which data may be processed. This is usually one year but may be longer if necessary for the specific research purpose. Each request for HESA information under Purpose 4 is assessed for its compliance with data protection legislation and its compatibility with this Collection Notice. JISC ensures that only the minimum amount of HESA information necessary for the specified research purpose is supplied to users. If the supplied information is to be published HESA's Rounding Methodology or an equivalent disclosure control must be applied to ensure that individuals cannot be identified from the published material and it does not constitute Personal Data.

A copy of HESA’s current agreement for access to Heidi Plus is available here. Each agreement specifies the purpose for which the data may be processed.

DfE Data Sharing Service

If you are a student at a provider in England, HESA information may be linked to school and/or further education college information and supplied or linked to researchers' data through the Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service ('ONS SRS'). In some cases, HESA information may be shared with researchers directly following this linking activity. This onward sharing to researchers is provided by the DfE Data Sharing Service. DfE are the Controller of the data processed as part of the provision of this service. Copies of the ‘Agreement for the Supply of Linked Data’ and of the ‘Agreement for Making Linked Data available in ONS SRS’ can be requested from data.sharing@education.gov.uk.

DfE Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO)

Your HESA information may be linked to school, college, employment, tax and benefits data by the DfE and may be supplied to researchers by the DfE through the Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service. More information is available from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/longitudinal-education-outcomes-study-how-we-use-and-share-data.

Other Controllers (listed under Purpose 1 above) may also process data for this purpose where this is necessary to fulfil their public functions.

The GMC is a body with statutory responsibilities for the education, training, and regulation of medical practitioners in the UK. These responsibilities are set out in the Medical Act 1983.

The GMC will use data for the purposes of:

• Promoting, maintaining and improving high standards of medical education and training in the UK.
• Undertaking research that will allow the GMC to co-ordinate policy across all stages of medical education, including selection to medical school, undergraduate education, postgraduate education, and medical practice. This research is only possible with high quality measures of school performance. More information about how GMC use your data in research projects can be found here.
• The GMC will not use the data collected by HESA to make decisions about individual students or doctors.

Sometimes an HE provider’s circumstances change so that it isn’t compulsory for it to submit student data to HESA. In this case, the HE provider and HESA (following consultation with relevant Statutory Customers) might agree to continue to allow the return of data by the provider for their students where this is considered to be in the public interest. Should the status of the provider change so that it becomes compulsory to submit student data to HESA, this will be collected under Purpose 1.

HESA processes your HESA information as part of a larger statistical dataset for the above purposes to:

• Create derived fields to enrich data utility and insights of HESA data
• Contextualise the use of HESA data
• Research and understand progression through higher education. This may include linking to survey responses provided in the future as part of the Graduate Outcomes survey and to other datasets for example college data
• Quality assure data and to remove anomalies and improve data accuracy. This may include processing personal data in the context of providing bespoke training to higher education providers to provide analysis and improve data quality
• Research into data quality and the sector’s reliance on time series data
• Check it against information submitted to UCAS to improve data accuracy
• Check it against information submitted to National Student Survey (NSS) to improve data accuracy
• To review how changes and improvements can be made to HESA’s processing including systems and software and the implications that this would have on the data it produces.