Update delivered by Kenny Wilson, Senior Policy/Analysis Officer, SFC at the CDN MIS Network event on 21st November, 2019.

1. 1
FES Update (Oral) – Kenny Wilson
MIS meeting 21 November 2019
EMA/SSF
1. It is unfortunate that once again we have found major problems when trying to
match the EMA end of year student records back into the FES student records.
Initially we found that the matching of records was not possible for over half of
the 8,463 EMA records.
2. In 2018-19 SFC dropped the requirement for colleges to flag EMA students within
FES. This was because in previous years we had major issues with reconciling the
EMA student records on the end of year EMA return with those flagged as EMA
student in FES. For 2018-19 we instead would use the EMA students in the
annual return to retrospectively flag the FES student record(s).
3. There are a few common reasons why we could not match records to the FES,
namely:
• The most common reason being that the ‘programme ID’ was not correct
i.e. it was not a programme ID but rather a course level code and there was
no cohort group character provided to allow matching.
• The student matriculation number differed in structure from that in the
student FES record.
• Student not found on FES from the combined data provided.
4. Colleges need to ensure that they provide good quality data in the end of year
EMA return. They should look to build in a quality check to assure that the
data/field format submitted to SFC matches that in the FES student record. It is
most likely that we will request this data to be submitted before FES closes so
that we can sense check the EMA student data and return to colleges, if
necessary, to correct before we commence the collation and matching process.
5. For improved in-year redistribution and monitoring of SSF we expect ‘spend-to-
date’ on all the student support funds to be updated, at least, for each of the
quarterly FES submissions.

2. 2
Update on FES/EMA Online developments
6. We have developed an EMA monthly return via FES and this has been tested by 4
volunteer colleges and overall the feedback was very positive. The developers
are currently making some final adjustments to the system following feedback
from college testing and we anticipate the ‘new’ EMA online system to be ‘live’ in
time for the December submission. An email communication with instruction will
be sent out to college EMA contacts when the system is ready to go ‘live’.
7. Once EMA Online is ‘live’ we then intend moving FES Online over to a similar
platform. Initially this will primarily see changes to SFC administration and
provide enhanced security through individual access rights (user/password). We
will follow up with additional communications, as necessary, once the system is
ready to go ‘live’, most likely sometime in the first quarter of 2020.
FES – 2nd phase online developments
8. The STEM report in FES Online Summary report will be updated to include the
additional superclassess introduced to the OA STEM measurement definition in
2019.
9. The addition of a FES1 to FES 2 count validation error check on non-
fundable/skeletal records.
10. The addition of a field in both FES 2 and FES 4 to flag students who are ‘in receipt
of a care experience bursary’.
11. To remove the validation error for missing ‘maintenance group’ when there is no
maintenance allowance being paid to a student.
12. To the FES 1 Error ‘er03028’ - remove ‘Type of programme - Code 06’ from the
validation and change reporting error message to read ‘School link - learning
difficulty course types should be at FE level’ (drop the word or from current error
statement).

3. 3
FES – 2020-21
13. Due to some data quality issues with the fields ‘student nationality’ and ‘pre-
study home postcode’, that we would have used to determine home location, we
will be re-introducing the ‘Permanent home location’ field back in to the FES 2
student record collection for the 2020-21 academic year.
14. We previously indicated to both college MIS representatives and college MIS
Software suppliers our intention to eventually drop the separate FES 4 student
funding collection and for all student support fund data to be returned via the
FES 2 student record (where this has always been possible to do). Colleges have
said that there should be no technical reason why this could not now happen
therefore, this is early notice of our intention to remove the separate FES 4 file
return from FES in AY 2020-21. All student support fund expenditure would be
required to be reported within the FES 2 student record.
15. SFC has seen increasing demand to view the sector though a skills lens and in
particular to categorise college activity by Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC)
and Standard Occupational Classifications (SOC). This would enable the college
enrolments and graduates to be compared against workforce statistics including
jobs and vacancies by SIC and/or SOC. It is SFCs intention to add the requirement
to provide in the student record both SIC and SOC codes as fully as possible from
2020-21 onwards. Providing this information on a consistent basis is expected to
benefit all stakeholders. (SAGE will work with sector representatives through
SAGE over the early part of 2020 to determine superclass to SIC mapping,
coverage etc.)
16. Addition of a separate field in FES 1 to report the formal qualification title that
will be separate from the college marketing course title. This will allow for ease
of reporting within the Course PI Tool and assist the filtering of courses for
benchmarking purpose.