This is a summary of the overall financial position of universities and other higher education providers registered with the Office for Students (OfS).
It excludes further education and sixth form colleges and covers the financial year ending in 2021 (referred to as 2020-21) and the previous year (2019-20).
It is published as an official statistic and was prepared by the OfS on 17 June 2022.
Source of the data
The data comes from 247 higher education providers registered with the OfS reported through the OfS Annual Financial Return (AFR). Our guidance on the return (regulatory advice 14) sets out the information that providers must submit.
The data collected in the return must be consistent with a provider’s audited financial statements.
Of the 247 higher education providers included in this release:
- The data for 214 providers comes from the return for 2021, and represents data submitted in providers’ audited financial statements for the year ending 2021 (2020-21 data) and prior year 2020 (2019-20 data).
- The data for 33 providers comes from the return for 2020, as these providers have either not yet submitted or signed off their submission for 2021. For these 33 providers the 2020-21 data represents a forecast position submitted to the OfS during 2021. The 2019-20 data reflects audited data.
HESA publish the underlying provider-level data as open data. The next planned release is 14 July 2022 and will include data for providers with a financial year end up to and including 31 July 2021.
Future releases will include data for providers with financial year ends from 1 August 2021 onwards. HESA do not publish forecast data, and so forecast data included in this release for 33 providers will not be available in the HESA open data.
Contact us
For any queries about the Annual Financial Return data, please contact Laura Davies, Principal Analyst (Finance data), at [email protected].
