News
Higher Education Update
During January 2012, the Learning Records Service (LRS) hosted a meeting with senior representatives from the Higher Education (HE) sector to discuss use of Unique Learner Numbers (ULNs) in the HE system.
Those attending included Professor Sir Robert Burgess, Vice Chancellor of the University of Leicester and formerly Chair of UCAS, and Mary Curnock Cook, Chief Executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). There were also senior representatives from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).
- The LRS HESA pilots concluded that there was scope for reducing the burden of data collection within the HE sector, and that use of the ULN was a key enabler to this streamlining of data collection and data sharing. This work is being taken forward through one of two projects currently being run by the Interim Regulatory Partnership Board: ‘Redesigning the HE data and information landscape’, which will report in July 2012.
- Active discussions continue between UCAS and the LRS to develop the use of the ULN and PLR to assist with student applications to universities.
