Higher Education: Statistics
Business, Innovation and Skills

Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood, Labour)

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills with reference to the Higher Education White Paper, what progress he has made in achieving his aim of reducing the burden of data collection on higher education institutions.

David Willetts (Minister of State (Universities and Science), Business, Innovation and Skills; Havant, Conservative)

In the White Paper, we made a commitment to work with the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) through its periodical data review process. Reviews have recently been completed for the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey, and the Staff data stream. These reviews will result in changes for 2011/12 and 2012/13 respectively. The Student and Estates data streams are currently under review.

For the longer term, in the HE White Paper BIS asked the Higher Education Better Regulation Group (HEBRG) to progress an exploratory project to transform the information landscape of the HE sector, which will apply a “collect once, use many times” approach to data collection. This expects to report in summer 2012 on the feasibility of redesigning the information landscape to reduce the burden of reporting on higher education providers.