Introduction
This Statistical First Release (SFR) has been produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) in collaboration with statisticians from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Welsh Government (WG), the Scottish Government (SG) and the Department for Employment and Learning Northern Ireland (DEL(NI)). It has been released according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority. It provides details of student enrolments and qualifications obtained by higher education (HE) students at HE institutions (HEIs) in the United Kingdom (UK) for the academic year 2012/13.
For the first time this year this SFR also includes summary statistics about study at higher education level in further education colleges, and it therefore presents figures illustrating the totality of higher education provision in publicly-funded institutions in the UK. This SFR also includes information from the HESA Aggregate Offshore Record. This record captures students studying wholly outside the UK who are either registered with the reporting institution or who are studying for an award of the reporting institution.
Readers should be aware that data definitions sometimes change over time and this can affect the validity of time series comparisons. Any significant changes have been explained in the Notes to Tables and/or Definitions.
A statistical reference volume ‘Students in Higher Education Institutions 2012/13' providing more detailed information about students in higher education in the UK will be published by HESA in February 2014.
