Higher education enrolments with at least 1 credit studied in the Welsh language by subject
Next update expected:July 2026
Updates
- 27th November 2025
- Dataset first published.
Main information
- Designation
- Official statistics
- Data provider
- Higher Education Statistics Agency
- Data source
- Student record
Overview
- Summary of dataset and variables
The data shows the number and percentage of enrolments where at least 1 credit is being studied in the language of Welsh by module subject.
The data can be broken down by:
Academic year - 1 August to 31 July, e.g. 2023/24 is 1 August 2023 to 31 July 2024.
Entrant marker - all enrolments or those in the first year of their studies.
Level of study
Mode of study - full-time or part-time
Module subject - the subjects of the modules studied, based on the HESA Common Aggregate Hierarchy.
Provider
Welsh speaking ability - self-reported ability by the student.
- Data collection or calculation
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects data from higher education providers about students enrolled at their institution. For Welsh higher education providers, this includes collecting data about the percentage of each module that is delivered through the medium of Welsh for each enrolment. The data also includes the subject(s) of each module, if a module has more than one subject then the percentage of the module in each subject is also provided.
Population included
The enrolments included are those in the HESA standard registration population at Welsh HE providers. A student may have more than one enrolment in an academic year, if this is a case then each enrolment is counted separately.
To be included in the HESA standard population, an enrolment needs to be active in study at least two weeks after their engagement start date or subsequent anniversaries of. Students who are writing-up (and have no active study) after this anniversary date are excluded from the population, as are students expected to study for two weeks or less and who don’t complete their studies or gain a qualification. Dormant students, incoming visiting and exchange students from overseas and students studying for the whole of their programme of study outside of the UK are also excluded.
All modules that have some activity in the relevant academic year are included.
Calculation of number of credits studied in Welsh by subject
The number of credits taught in Welsh is calculated by multiplying the total number of credits in a module by the percentage delivered in Welsh. This is then multiplied by the subject percentages to get the number of credits in Welsh for each module subject. For each enrolment the total number of Welsh credits in each subject is then the sum of the credits for all modules in the enrolment.
As each enrolment is split into subjects, the number of enrolments is a full-person equivalent. For example, an enrolment that has 50% of modules in psychology and 50% in social sciences will be counted as 0.5 in each subject.
Module information for postgraduate research enrolments is optional. For enrolments where module information is not returned then the equivalent information at an enrolment level is used instead.
- Statistical quality
Codes Data values with a [t] code are either totals or sub-totals. Data values with a [c] code have been suppressed as they are percentages calculated where the denominator is less than 22.5.
Impact of splitting enrolments by subject on the total compared to other analysis
As the number of enrolments in this data is a full-person equivalent split across subjects, it results in an inconsistent total number of enrolments with at least 1 credit in Welsh when compared to data that does not split the data into subjects.
The reason for this is that an enrolment with at least 1 credit in Welsh overall, may only have the Welsh credits in one subject. For example, an enrolment could be 50% psychology and 50% social sciences and involved 5 credits in Welsh that are all in psychology. Ignoring subject this would count as 1 enrolment with at least 1 credit in Welsh. However in this data, the enrolment would be counted as 0.5 enrolments in psychology with at least 1 credit in Welsh, and 0 enrolments in social sciences with at least 1 credit in Welsh.
Number of credits studied in Welsh
Determining the percentage of a module that is studied through Welsh for each student is not easy to estimate, and can result in inconsistency between providers and across years. This is particularly the case for modules that are delivered bilingually, and largely affects the numbers of enrolments with lower numbers of credits, such as the 'at least 1 credit' and 'at least 5 credits' categories. For example, University of Wales Trinity Saint David have reviewed how they calculate these percentages, including modules where students may have a 'passive' bilingual experience with materials being provided in Welsh and English, and this was a large factor in the decrease in enrolments with at least 1 credit in Welsh between 2022/23 and 2023/24.
Medr and the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol have been working with providers to improve the consistency of how this percentage is calculated, and will continue to do so.
Welsh speaking ability
A change in how Welsh language ability was collected in 2022/23 resulted in some data quality issues.
One issue is that the change may affect the consistency in how data was recorded. For example, before 2022/23 a student who knows limited Welsh may have felt their ability wasn't good enough to be a non-fluent Welsh speaker, while in 2022/23 onwards the Welsh speaker: just knows a few words, category may be more appropriate. It doesn't appear that this has had a considerable impact but is something that will be monitored in upcoming years.
There were also a couple of provider specific issues:
Open University has had an increased proportion of students of unknown Welsh language ability since 2022/23, with no distinction between unknowns and not being a Welsh speaker as had been the case in 2021/22 and earlier.
University of South Wales had issues implementing the new data structure, resulting in the following issues:
- In 2022/23, a larger than expected number of students were returned as being non-fluent speakers, or Welsh speakers of unknown proficiency. This doesn't appear to reflect reality as the numbers fell to more usual levels in 2023/24.
- In 2023/24, the number of students with an unknown Welsh speaking ability increased due to software issues.
These provider quality issues also affect sector wide figures, resulting in increased levels of unknowns in both years, and a higher than usual number of non-fluent students in 2022/23.
- Rounding applied
Numbers of enrolments have been rounded to the nearest 5.
Percentages have been calculated using unrounded figures and rounded to the nearest 1%. If the denominator for a percentage is less than 22.5 then the percentage has been suppressed.
Published by
- Organisation
- Medr
- Contact email
- HEStats@medr.cymru