Students applying for and being successfully granted independent student status: FOI release

Information requested

 

The number of students who applied for independent student status and the number of students who were successfully granted independent student status, for 2014-2015 to 2018-2019.

 

Response

 

We have provided the number of students assessed as an independent student for session 2014-2015 to 2017-2018 below: 

Academic Session	Number of Students assessed as Independent
2014-2015	25,205
2015-2016	25,215
2016-2017	26,130
2017-2018	28,515

 However, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the number of students that applied for independent student status would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. In order to confirm if they applied as an independent student we would need to manually check over 570,000 student applications.

Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

 

Furthermore, an exemption under section 30(c) (Otherwise prejudice effective conduct of public affairs) of FOISA applies to the information for the 2018-2019 academic session. The reason why this exemption applies is explained in the Annex to this letter.

 

ANNEX

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION 

An exemption applies, subject to the public interest test 

An exemption under section 30(c) of FOISA (prejudice to the conduct of public affairs) applies to the information you requested in relation to academic session 2018-2019. This exemption applies because the National Statistics Publication for session 2018-2019 academic year is scheduled to be published at the end of October.  As set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/code-of-practice/ ‘No indication of the statistics should be made public and the statistics should not be given to any other party without prior permission for access’. This request would provide an indication of the statistics due to be published, which would constitute substantial prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs in terms of the exemption. 

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’.  Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.  We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption.  We recognise that there is some public interest in release because statistics relating to student funding are published.  However, this is outweighed by the public interest in maintaining the integrity of the published data. The information in the Publication may differ from what we would provide to you, therefore releasing the data in the request will affect the integrity and accuracy of the publication.

 

The SAAS Statistics publication will be published at the end of October on this page. If the information and statistics are not sufficient please submit a further FoI after this date.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.