Independent review of Data Futures programme published

Medr has today welcomed the publication of the independent review of the Data Futures programme.

The Data Futures programme, which started delivery in 2017, set out to make data collection and reporting in higher education more efficient, in the first major change to student data systems in more than two decades.

The intention of the programme is to deliver a method to collect a single stream of high-quality data from the higher education sector, allowing students to make well-informed choices about their studies, backed up by timely information.

On behalf of the regulatory and funding organisations in the four UK nations, the Office for Students (OfS) commissioned Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) to undertake an independent review of these issues in the summer of 2024.

As part of this work, PwC engaged with sector groups and a selection of institutions across the UK. PwC then drew upon their experiences to create recommendations for all the organisations involved in the programme.

Simon Pirotte, Chief Executive of Medr said: “We welcome the report and will be working through the recommendations with Jisc and the other statutory customers to look at the feasibility of implementing them. We will revisit our requirements for in-year data to inform the work to define the scope of an in-year data collection.”

Office for Students press release Data Futures: Independent Review