Student enrolments and qualifiers at higher education providers in Wales by country of permanent address on entry to their course
Next update expected:January 2027
Updates
- 29th January 2026
- 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 of enrolments and the number of qualifiers at Welsh higher education providers.
The data can be broken down by:
Academic year - 1 August to 31 July, e.g. 2024/25 is 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025.
Entrant marker - all enrolments or those in the first year of their studies.
Level of study
Mode of study - full-time or part-time
Permanent address - the country of a student's home address on entry to their course.
Provider
Sex - the sex of the student as opposed to the gender with which they identify. Students where this has been returned as 'Other', 'Not available' or 'Information refused' are included in the figures for all enrolments.
- Data collection or calculation
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects data from higher education providers about students enrolled at their institution.
Enrolments population
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.
Qualifiers population
The population used for the qualifiers data is the HESA Qualifications obtained population. This population includes student enrolments associated with the award of a higher education qualification during the relevant academic year. This includes qualifications awarded from dormancy, after active study has ceased, and writing-up status.
- Statistical quality
Codes
Data values with a [t] code are either totals or sub-totals.
Increased proportion of unknowns in permanent address data from 2022/23
A new data collection model was introduced for the HESA Student Record data collection from the 2022/23 academic year. The new model made a considerable change to the collection process and there were an increased number of challenges and issues compared to previous years.
One issue has been an increase in the number of records returned where a student's country of permanent address is unknown, which may have resulted in a reduced number of students recorded as being from Wales. Prior to 2022/23, less than 0.1% of enrolments at Welsh providers were returned with an unknown permanent address. This increased to 0.3% (475 enrolments) in 2022/23, 1.2% (1,845 enrolments) in 2023/24 and 0.2% (355 enrolments) in 2024/25. It is expected that the proportion of unknowns will decrease in the future.
More general information about quality issues in the HESA Student Record can be found on the HESA website.
- Rounding applied
Figures are rounded to the nearest 5. Totals are calculated on unrounded figures and then rounded to the nearest 5 so may not equal the sum of the constituent parts.
Published by
- Organisation
- Medr
- Contact email
- HEStats@medr.cymru