Student enrolments and number of qualifiers from Wales at higher education providers across the UK by personal characteristics

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Personal characteristics
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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.

  • Country of provider

  • Entrant marker - all enrolments or those in the first year of their studies.

  • Level of study

  • Mode of study - full-time or part-time

  • Personal characteristics - either age group, whether a student has a known disability or not, or ethnic background

  • 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.

Disability data

Disability information is collected based on a student’s self-assessment and they are not obliged to report any disabilities they have. This information is collected every year so may change over time.

Ethnicity data

Ethnicity information is only collected for students whose permanent address prior to starting their studies is in the UK, Guernsey, Jersey or the Isle of Man, and is collected based on the student’s self-assessment. This information is collected every year so may change over time.

Statistical quality

Codes

Data values with a [t] code are either totals or sub-totals.

Differences compared to figures published by HESA

There are some very small differences in the number of enrolments by students from Wales in this data compared to what is published by HESA, for example the number of total number of enrolments in 2016/17 and 2017/18 differ by 5. These differences result from differences in the version of the data being used for older data and differences in how some variables are aggregated.

Increased proportion of unknowns in ethnicity 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 with unknown ethnicity information. In the five years before 2022/23, approximately 1.5% of enrolments by students from Wales were returned with unknown ethnicity. In 2022/23 the proportion of unknowns increased to 2.5% before dropping to 2.2% in 2023/24 and 2.3% in 2024/25.

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.

Related reports

Published by

Organisation
Medr
Contact email
HEStats@medr.cymru