Official statistics
Sta/Medr/02/2025: Equality characteristics of students and staff at higher education providers: 2016/17 to 2022/23
30 Jan 2025
Key Points
Students
- The proportion of students with a disability has increased every year from 2016/17 to 2022/23. The proportion has increased from 13% in 2016/17 to 17% in 2022/23.
- The proportion of students with an ethnic minority background has increased in every year from 2016/17 to 2022/23. The proportion has increased from 10% in 2016/17 to 14% in 2022/23.
- The majority of students are female. This size of this majority has increased from 55% in 2016/17 to 57% in 2022/23.
Staff
- The proportion of staff with a disability increased each year from 2016/17 to 2022/23. For academic staff the proportion increased from 4% to 7% and for non-academic staff the proportion increased from 6% to 10%.
- The proportion of staff with an ethnic minority background has increased each year from 2016/17 to 2022/23. For academic staff the proportion increased from 11% to 17% and for non-academic staff the proportion increased from 4% to 6%.
- The majority of academic staff are male, although the size of this majority has fallen slightly from 53% in 2016/17 to 52% in 2022/23. The majority of non-academic staff in this period were female. The size of this majority is 62% in 2022/23 which is the same as in 2016/17.
Methodology information
Data Sources
The data for this release come from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) Student and Staff records collected by Jisc.
In 2022/23 the student data was collected with the revised data collection delivered by the Data Futures programme. Jisc conducted a comprehensive quality assessment on the dataset and this is detailed in their 2022/23 student data quality report. A summary of the Student data collection process for 2022/23 covering timescales, validation and business rules and checking processes is included on the HESA website. Information about the earlier years of student data can also be found on the HESA website.
A summary of the Staff data collection process and associated quality rules can be found on the HESA Staff data collection page.
Coverage – Students
The statistics include students who are part of HESA’s higher education standard registration population. More information on this population can be found in the student definitions on the HESA website.
All uses of ‘students’ in this bulletin refer to ‘student enrolments’. This is a count of each enrolment for a course. In rare instances where a student was enrolled in two different courses in the same year, that student would be counted twice.
Coverage – Staff
These statistics include staff who are in the HESA staff contract population, which includes those individuals who have one or more contracts (which are not atypical) that are active on 1 December in the relevant HESA reporting period. Staff on a atypical contract are those members of staff whose contracts involve working arrangements that are not permanent, involve complex employment relationships and/or involve work away from the supervision of the normal work provider.
All figures on staff are the full-person equivalents (FPE). Individuals can hold more than one contract with a provider and each contract may involve more than one activity. In analyses staff counts have been divided amongst the activities in proportion to the declared full-time equivalent for each activity. This results in counts of FPE.
More information on this population can be found in the staff definitions on the HESA website.
Rounding Strategy
The data presented in this report follow the principles of the HESA Standard Rounding Methodology. The strategy is intended to prevent the disclosure of personal information about any individual.
This means that:
- Student and staff counts are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5.
- Percentages are calculated based on the unrounded counts and exclude unknowns. Percentages are not published if they are fractions of a small group of people (fewer than 22.5).
- Totals are also subject to this rounding methodology. As a result, the sum of numbers in each row or column may not match the total shown precisely.
Quality information
Statement of compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.
All of our statistics are produced and published in accordance with a number of statements and protocols to enhance trustworthiness, quality and value. These are set out in Medr’s Statement of Compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
These official statistics demonstrate the standards expected around trustworthiness, quality and value in the following ways.
Trustworthiness
These statistics have been published according to Medr’s Statement of Compliance and pre-release access to official statistics policy.
Quality and Value
This section provides a summary of information on this statistical release against five dimensions of quality: Relevance, Accuracy, Timeliness and Punctuality, Accessibility and Clarity, and Comparability and Coherence. These also cover the aspects of the Value pillar in the Code of Practice for Statistics.
- Relevance
The data in this report gives an overview of some equalities characteristics of students and staff in the higher education sector in Wales. This can be used to identify how effective particular policies related to equalities characteristics in higher education are, or to identify whether those with particular characteristics are under-represented in higher education. - Accuracy
The HESA student and staff data are both censuses rather than surveys, as such there is no inaccuracy due to estimation. However, the accuracy of the data can be affected by errors in the data submitted. This is mitigated with a comprehensive set of quality checks, where potential issues are queried with providers so a suitable explanation for the data can be reached, or the data is corrected if necessary.
The other factor affecting accuracy is where personal characteristics are returned as unknown. During the data collection process high levels of unknown values are queried with HE providers to minimise this where possible. The number of students and staff returned with unknown values are included in the spreadsheet and PowerBI dashboard so the scale of these are clear to users. - Timeliness and punctuality
The data in this release refers to student and staff data up to the 2022/23 academic year. As the HESA student and staff data collections are retrospective collections there is a lag between the academic year and when the data can be made available. This lag has been extended for this publication due to two factors:
* Delays to the student data collection as a result of the implementation of the Data Futures programme. This resulted in data being available later than usual.
*The establishment of Medr. Prior to this release, these statistics were published by HEFCW. Unlike HEFCW, Medr is a producer of Official Statistics and setting up the appropriate processes for this, as well as the general establishment of Medr, contributed to an increased amount of time required to produce this analysis.
The latter of these factors will not affect future versions of this release, and the delays associated with the Data Futures programme will reduce as the new data collection process becomes established. - Accessibility and clarity
This statistical release was pre-announced on the Welsh Government’s statistical release calendar.
This report is accompanied by a PowerBI dashboard and a spreadsheet which can both be accessed on the Medr website. - Comparability and coherence
As the HESA student and staff data collections are UK-wide data collections, these statistics can be compared to similar analysis of equalities data for Higher Education providers across the UK which is available on the HESA Open Data website.
Sta/Medr/02/2025: Equality characteristics of students and staff at higher education providers: 2016/17 to 2022/23
Official statistics reference: Sta/Medr/02/2025
Date: 30 January 2025
Summary: This publication contains an analysis of equality characteristics of students and staff at higher education providers in Wales from the 2016/17 academic year to the 2022/23 academic year.
Contact: [email protected]
Sta/Medr/02/2025: Equalities characteristics of students and staff at HE providers 2016/17 to 2022/23Secondary documents
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