This Statistical First Release (SFR) has been produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), in collaboration with statisticians from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Welsh Government (WG), the Scottish Government (SG) and the Department for Employment and Learning Northern Ireland (DEL(NI)). It has been released according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority. It provides details of the destinations of UK and other European Union domiciled leavers from higher education (HE) who obtained qualifications in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United Kingdom (UK), during the academic year 2011/12. The data presented draws on the new version of the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey introduced in 2011/12.
Following a review of the DLHE survey and consultation with government departments, the HE sector and users of the data, the DLHE survey has been re-designed to collect richer information from leavers particularly regarding their activities on the survey date. Leavers now report all the activities that they are undertaking on the census date and then indicate which one they consider to be most important to them. From these responses, destination categories are derived taking into account the most important activity and, in some instances, other activities the leaver is involved in. Read the changes to the survey document [pdf 138 KB] .
Consequently, the DLHE survey has different definitions for the destination categories reported. Direct comparisons should not therefore be made with figures presented in previous years.
The coverage of the survey has been expanded to include additional HE qualifications and now includes Non-EU domiciled leavers where it was previously restricted to UK and European Union domiciled leavers only. The target population in 2011/12 was 703,615 leavers of which 133,175 were Non-EU leavers. Surveying these leavers was undertaken as a pilot for 2011/12 with a clear distinction that the information collected should not be published until carefully reviewed. These leavers are therefore excluded from this SFR. Additionally, there were 2,960 leavers who obtained postgraduate research qualifications from dormant status. The destination outcomes of these leavers are considered to be materially different in nature to the outcomes of the other postgraduate research leavers included in the survey so these leavers have been excluded.