INFORMATION GOVERNANCE
Lafrowda House
St. German’s Road
Exeter, UK
EX4 6TL
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxx.xx.xx
www.exeter.ac.uk/ig
6 March 2020
Ref: FOI20-109
Dear Requester,
Thank you for your email of 2nd March 2020 requesting information under the Freedom of Information
Act 2000. Please see the responses to each of your questions below:
I am making this FOI request to help find an answer to my question. What is the male to female
ratio for your Law courses, for the past 10 years? The law courses I would like explored are
your single honours course, such as the Law LLB M100 course, and double honours schemes,
such as Law with XXX (i.e. Politics, Economics, Business etc.).
If you accept this FOI request and present this in document form, could you please do this
course by course and year by year.
The data you have requested for past academic years is available through HESA’s custom data
request scheme (https://www.hesa.ac.uk/services/custom/data/request) and is therefore exempt
under Section 21 of the FOIA as it is already reasonably accessible through other means.
Data for the current and future years will be available at the same location following its publication by
HESA. These data are therefore exempt from disclosure under Section 22 of the FOIA.
Data which is disseminated by HESA for a fee is considered to be commercially sensitive and is
therefore exempt from disclosure under Section 43 of the FOIA.
Section 43 is a qualified exemption and as such a public interest test has been carried out. In favour
of disclosure we considered the need for the University to report openly on its activity. Against that we
considered the commercial interests of HESA as the organisation responsible for disseminating such
statistics. HESA is the body nominated to provide statistics on the Higher Education sector in the UK.
Disclosure of data available from HESA would prejudice their ability to sell said data via their paid
service to third parties. There is likely to be significant commercial harm as a public disclosure under
the FOIA would allow the release of information with commercial value, therefore severely weakening
their ability to continue to sell this level of data. Such sales assist in the finance of their operations and
the pursuit of their charitable aims; reduction in income from such services could lead to
consequences include loss of significant revenue, inability to offer the same level of service to other
customers or potentially impact on jobs within their organisation.
Some of the data you have requested represents small populations of individuals which therefore
could easily be identified. This data would need to be anonymised and is exempt under Section 40 of
the FOIA. It should be noted that HESA will also anonymise this data before release where
appropriate.
This response has been prepared in accordance with a request received pursuant to the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. The supply of documents under FOI does not give the person who receives the
information an automatic right to re-use the documents without obtaining the consent of the copyright
holder. If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an
internal review. You must submit this to the Information Governance Office in writing within 40 days of
receipt of this notification. Please quote the reference number above.
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to
the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
(https://ico.org.uk/)
Kind Regards,
Information Governance
University of Exeter