Data set from Higher Level Learners in England

Primary funding source

Latest data

Published 8 October 2026

Last updated 8 October 2026

English-domiciled higher-level learners in England by primary funding source of tuition fees.

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Data set details

• Theme: Higher education
• Publication: Higher Level Learners in England
• Release: Academic year 2024/25
• Number of rows: 12,672
• Geographic levels: National, Regional
• Indicators:
  • Number of entrants
  • Number of qualifiers
  • Percentage of all enrolments by characteristic
• Filters:
  • Broad primary funding source
  • Broad type of higher learning
  • Detailed type of higher learning
• Time period: 2015/16 to 2022/23

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Data set preview

Table showing first 5 rows, from underlying data

time_period	time_identifier	geographic_level	country_code	country_name	region_code	region_name	level	broad_type_of_learning	detailed_type_of_learning	primary_funding_source	number_of_entrants	number_of_enrolments	number_of_qualifiers	percentage_of_entrants_by_characteristic	percentage_of_all_enrolments_by_characteristic	percentage_of_qualifiers_by_characteristic
201516	Academic year	National	E92000001	England			Level 4	Higher education	OfS-recognised HE	Alternative funding source	4920	8270	4275	24.6	28.2	18.2
201516	Academic year	National	E92000001	England			Level 4	Higher education	OfS-recognised HE	No award or financial backing	7905	11385	6090	39.6	38.9	25.9
201516	Academic year	National	E92000001	England			Level 4	Higher education	OfS-recognised HE	Not applicable or not known	2810	4110	5355	z	z	z
201516	Academic year	National	E92000001	England			Level 4	Higher education	OfS-recognised HE	Student loan	6110	7930	11840	30.6	27.1	50.3
201516	Academic year	National	E92000001	England			Level 4	Higher education	OfS-recognised HE	Total	22790	33395	28895	100	100	100

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Variables in this data set

Table showing first 5 of 10 variables

Variable name	Variable description
broad_type_of_learning	Broad type of higher learning
detailed_type_of_learning	Detailed type of higher learning
level	Level of study
number_of_enrolments	Total number of enrolments
number_of_entrants	Number of entrants

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Footnotes

1. See the publication Methodology for explanation of differences from other official statistics on apprenticeships and higher education.
2. The “Other higher level - Unfunded” category is a lower bound estimate. There is likely to be some unfunded-learning in FE providers that is not recorded as it is only mandatory for providers to record information in the ILR for their government-funded learners. There may also be higher level learning in the private sector that is not recorded in administrative data held by government.
3. Since 2022/23, HESA have reported a larger amount of missing permanent address information at a number of providers. Some of the missing data relates to continuing students for whom it was not possible to retrieve the information from the legacy submissions. Other missing data may be attributed to missing entry information.
4. Geographies are taken from the National Statistics Postcode Lookup based on boundaries as of February 2024.
5. Due to data quality concerns around the field used to record a student’s majority source of tuition fee funding in the HESA Student Record, 2023/24 and 2024/25 data have not been published. A large number of students were incorrectly listed as studying on a course with no required fees.

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Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Primary funding source statistics and data:

HE Participation and Provider Statistics Team

Email: he.statistics@education.gov.uk
Contact name: Louis Erritt

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