Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (Disclosure of Higher Education Student Information) Regulations 2009

These regulations are the second use of the data-sharing power under the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 to make possible the sharing of data on students in higher education that otherwise could not be shared. These, and previous regulations that permitted the sharing of data from the school census, are part of a wider programme of work—the Migration Statistics Improvement Programme—which is being conducted by the National Statistician. The programme seeks to address the problems faced in estimating highly mobile populations and takes into account short-term migration. Access to administrative data that are collected and held by government departments and their agencies is essential if the Office for National Statistics is to meet increasing demands for new and improved population and migration statistics. The Government are committed to doing all they can to help to improve the accuracy of the population estimates, particularly at the local level. Both central and local government need accurate information on migrant numbers and the overall changes to the size and structure of the population at the local level. This is required for resource allocation and for the planning and delivery of local services. Long-term public expenditure planning, including the calculation and distribution of the formula grant to local authorities, and resource allocation to the Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families, depend on population statistics. The ONS has evaluated the content of the student record and has identified the information which it needs for its improvement work on population and migration statistics. The regulations will allow the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which collates the information on behalf of the higher education funding councils in England and Wales, to share this information with the ONS. This includes the name, date of birth, gender and ethnicity of the student, and details of their home and term-time postcodes as well as the information to facilitate an understanding of when moves take place. Access to these data will enable the ONS to refine and develop new approaches for the derivation of population estimates and projections. The benefits of sharing this information include better information on estimates of the number of migrants, improved accuracy of mid-year estimates and projections of population for local areas. These will include areas with high rates of population turnover, improved resource allocation, improved policy formulation and improved planning and delivery of service, as well as the development of ongoing research into the use of administrative data in updating population statistics without a traditional census. In addition, access to those data will help the ONS to improve the enumeration of students in the 2011 census and improve assessment of the quality of the statistics on students taken from that 2011 census. The regulations also make provision for the ONS to disclose records of students living in Scotland and attending higher education institutes in England and Wales to the General Register Office for Scotland, and the records of students living in Northern Ireland and attending higher education institutes in England and Wales to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. This information will be used by these organisations to improve population and migration statistics in Scotland and Northern Ireland which will then be provided to the ONS so that it can produce UK-level migration and population statistics. Data confidentiality and security arrangements are being assessed as a fundamental part of the preparation for the data sharing agreement between the organisations concerned. The ONS and the Higher Education Statistics Agency already work to tight confidentiality guidelines and have excellent data security records. They will put the necessary measures in place to protect data and avoid the disclosure of any private information about individual students. Information will be available from the ONS to Scotland and Northern Ireland via the secure Virtual Microdata Laboratory. During the debate held in January on schools census regulations, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised concerns about the large number of students resident in many cities who are not reflected in the numbers used for resource allocation. In supporting these regulations today, the Committee will help the ONS ensure that students are better represented in the statistics, leading to an improvement in the accuracy of those statistics. I therefore commend the draft regulations to the Committee.