Statistics Publication Notice: Early Destinations of Students Qualifying from Scottish Higher Education Institutions 2010-11

Notes to Tables

1. Domicile: country of the student's permanent or home address prior to entry to the course.

2. ‘Believed unemployed’ includes; qualifiers from HEIs that are looking for employment, further study or training or are due to start a job in the next month.

3. ‘Other’ destinations include; those who are unable to work, looking after the home or family, taking time out in order to travel, or are not otherwise included under an alternative heading.

Notes to News Editors

1. The figures in this publication are based on data collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) from higher education institutions (HEIs). Figures provided in the commentary have been derived from rounded values shown in the tables. Within tables, missing values have been replaced with “-“.

2. This publication contains information on students from HEIs who successfully completed a higher education course in Scotland in the years covered. Higher education courses are defined as non school qualifications at Level 7 or above of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF). Information on first destinations covers the activities of full-time and part-time students from Scottish HEIs, the rest of the UK and the rest of the EU.

3. First destination information is collected by HEIs through a voluntary survey to students of all nationalities within the European Union who have successfully completed their course. Details are requested about the qualifier’s destination on 18^th April 2011 or 9^th January 2012, for autumn and summer qualifiers respectively, by HEIs on behalf of the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

4. Weightings have been applied to qualifier destinations data (Tables 1 to 9, with the exception of Table 4) to more accurately reflect the destinations of all qualifiers from Scottish institutions rather than those who responded to the surveys. Un-weighted figures will be made available on the internet at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/llstatistics. For further details please refer to, within the methodological note.

5. Response rates for 2003-04 to 2010-11 have been calculated as the percentage of all qualifiers in the target population who were sent a questionnaire and replied stating a known destination. Non-respondents and unknown responses have been excluded from tables 1-10. The overall response rate to the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey has stayed relatively constant between 72 per cent and 75 per cent in each year since 2003-04. The response rates for this survey are given in Table 10 for each year since 2003-04.

6. This is a National Statistics publication. National Statistics are produced to high professional standards set out in the National Statistics Code of Practice. They undergo regular quality assurance reviews to ensure that they meet customer needs. They are produced free from any political interference.