Understanding HESA Returns

Government-funded academic institutions in the United Kingdom (UK) must submit student related returns of data to HESA. Institutions must submit the returns as an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file that conforms to the HESA schema definition.

A return is composed of various data fields. Specifications for each return and its data fields are available from the HESA website. HESA periodically amends the return specifications.

PeopleSoft Campus Solutions enables you to generate the Student, Aggregate Offshore, and Initial Teacher Training (ITT) returns for the 2008–09 reporting period onwards. In addition, you can generate a Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) return from the 2009–10 reporting period onwards and the Unistats (formerly Key Information Set – KIS) return for 2013–14 onwards.

To generate returns for submission:

1. Select the HESA, UCAS check box on the SA Features page.

2. Select the HESA, UCAS check box on the Academic Institution 6 page to enable the UK-specific regions in the system for an institution.

3. Set up the valid HESA field codes.

4. Enter HESA-specific data into your system.

5. Generate the HESA extract data.

6. Generate the XML file for the returns.

7. Validate the XML file for any schema errors.

Plan how you want the system to derive the return field values. Oracle recommends that you review the return type specification that is available from the HESA website to review the field descriptions, validations, and the valid field values. To understand how the system derives the fields, see Understanding HESA Derivation Steps.