Data checking tool
The data checking tool is a secure online tool, intended to facilitate the timely supply of regulatory data by higher education providers.
When you upload your data to the tool, it produces outputs showing how your data would be processed when we use it. The tool allows you to identify potential errors in the data and correct them before finalising and formally submitting data.
The data checking tool is primarily used between August and October each year, ahead of the submission deadlines.
This guide gives information about using the data checking tool for:
- Individualised Learner Record (ILR) data, to be submitted to the Department for Education (DfE) by 22 October 2025
- Student data (24056) to submitted to our designated data body (DDB) and signed off by 5 November 2025.
Updates to the data checking tool for 2024-25
As part of our continued efforts to minimise data process burden, we have made updates to the data checking tool for 2024-25.
We’ve reduced the number of processes that run through the data checking tools, so you will have fewer outputs that you are required to understand and interpret, and fewer queries to respond to at the point of submission to the DDB or the DfE.
These changes mean that we are moving from a uniform approach to data quality checks to one where you can focus your time and efforts on data quality improvements that are most relevant to you.
- Given the changes to funding following guidance from the Secretary of State in May 2025, we are expecting structural changes to the HESES25 data collection. HESES comparisons (which compare the end of year ILR and Jisc Student data submissions with the provider’s HESES data returned to the OfS at the start of the academic year) would therefore not assist providers’ preparations to submit HESES25. We are removing this output to ensure providers are not being asked to review summaries or data verification queries unnecessarily. We also do not want to pre-empt the specification of a reconciliation exercise in respect of 2024-25 funding. We will release post-collection outputs once that reconciliation exercise and its priorities are defined.
- You can now access information on student numbers and student characteristics elsewhere in the submission and verification process. We are therefore removing the student numbers, student characteristics and transparency data outputs from both the ILR and Student data checking tools, as well as the quality control data outputs for the ILR data checking tool. This will reduce the potential for duplication of the effort required by providers to review, interpret and respond to similar data summaries:
- When returning data to the DDB, you can access relevant information via the credibility reports the DDB provides.
- When returning data to the ILR, the DfE provides the ‘OfS HE Quality Control Report’ which is generated when the ILR is submitted.
- We have received concerns from providers that exploration of differences between the populations identified in SLC and Pearson data, and those returned in Student data returns, could, in some circumstances, pose a data privacy risk for the individuals in those populations. Consequently, for Student data submitted to the DDB, the Pearson and SLC data outputs will not be available for 2024-25. We are pausing construction of these outputs while we evaluate their operation and the value they add within data quality assurance processes.
- We will not raise or require responses to data verification queries via the data checking tools. This is because we recognise that this can be a burdensome process that might direct your data quality activities in ways that may not best support your efforts to submit a return that is fit for purpose.
Data amendments
We will only accept amendments to the data after it has been submitted and signed off in exceptional circumstances, where any data errors identified are widespread and significant and make a material difference to our use of the data. See further information on data amendments.
22 July 2025 - Updated section for 2024-25 data checking tools.
25 April 2024 - Updated for 2023-24
04 April 2023 - Updated for 2022-23
06 July 2022 - Updated for 2021-22
08 July 2021 - Updated for 2020-21
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