Ed Humpherson to Pippa Hebborn-Gibson: Accredited Official Statistics status for Participation Measures in Higher Education

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Sent from: Office for Statistics Regulation

Sent to: Department for Education

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Dear Pippa,

Request to cancel Accredited Official Statistics status for Participation Measures in Higher Education

Thank you for your letter on 20 August outlining the changes to the presentation and methodology of the Cohort-based Higher Education Participation (CHEP) statistics published by the Department for Education.

Given that the CHEP statistics have been integrated into the Widening Participation in Higher Education (WPHE) publication, the standalone CHEP publication no longer exists, and the WPHE statistics are published as official statistics, I agree to your request to cancel the accreditation of the CHEP statistics.

We welcome that the merger and methodology changes have resulted in more coherent, timely and accessible statistics on participation in higher education.

In future, if you would like to put the WPHE statistics forward for accreditation, we would welcome a request to assess the statistics.

Yours sincerely,

Ed Humpherson 
Director General for OSR 

Dear Ed,

Request to cancel Accredited Official Statistics status for Participation Measures in Higher Education

I am writing to seek your agreement to cancel the Accredited Official Statistics status of the Participation Measures in Higher Education publication, which reports on our Cohort-based Higher Education Participation (CHEP) statistics. Accreditation for this release was temporarily suspended in 2022 while the Department for Education undertook a substantial redevelopment of the statistics and methodology.

Since then, the statistics previously published in CHEP have been incorporated into an expanded Widening Participation in Higher Education (WPHE) publication. This change brings together information that was previously published across two separate statistical series into a single release, providing users with a more coherent, accessible and timely source of information on participation in higher education and widening participation.

The integration of CHEP into WPHE also completes the redevelopment described in the 2022 suspension letter, which proposed an alternative approach based on an extension of the methodology used in the WPHE statistics. The resulting statistics are now published as part of the expanded WPHE release, bringing data on higher education participation into one place and enabling more timely publication. Detailed information previously published across separate releases is now available through an interactive dashboard and accompanying underlying data files.

As part of the merger, a small number of methodological changes have been made to align the statistics across the combined publication. The release now consistently presents cohorts based on the academic year in which they were aged 15, uses broader historical data on higher education participation in Further Education Colleges, and measures participation by age 19 rather than participation at ages 18 or 19. These changes support a more consistent and comprehensive presentation of higher education participation statistics.

As the CHEP publication has now been superseded and no longer exists as a standalone statistical release, and as we do not currently intend to seek accreditation for the WPHE publication, I am seeking your agreement to cancel the Accredited Official Statistics status associated with CHEP. The WPHE publication will continue to be published as Official Statistics in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Yours sincerely,

Pippa Hebborn-Gibson

Head of Data Insight and Statistics & Head of Profession for Statistics