Admission Rates and Drop Out Rates for Care-Leavers and Estranged Students 2017/18 to 2022/23
Dear Imperial College London,
I'm getting in touch because I'd like to know more about the admission rates and drop out rates for care leavers and estranged students at your institution, as defined by UCAS. I'd like to know for each academic year since 2017:
- the number of care leaver applicants
- the number of care leaver applicants as a proportion of total applicants
- the number of offers given to care leaver applicants
- the number of offers given to care leaver applicants as a proportion of total applicants
- the number of care leavers admitted to the university
- the number of care leavers admitted to the university as a proportion of total applicants
- the number of care leavers who withdrew from their studies (or 'dropped out') in that academic year
- the number of care leavers who withdrew from their studies (or 'dropped out')
- the drop out rate for care leavers
- the drop out rate for all students
Please note this only refers to undergraduate studies.
Any information you can provide is appreciated.
Thanks
Ethan Moran-Smith
Dear Ethan Moran-Smith,
Thank you for your Freedom of Information Act request. We are writing to you further to our duty, contained at Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act, to provide advice and assistance to requesters.
Please refer to “Care experienced applicants, offers and places confirmed, past 5 application cycles” in the College FOI Disclosure log. Please refer to the ‘College Statistics Guides’ for information on the total number of applicants, offers made etc. Information about student withdrawals is also available in the College Disclosure log, 'Student withdrawals past five academic years'. See links below. This information addresses your questions 1 – 6 and 10.
Regarding questions 7, 8 and 9, it is not clear what the difference is between those three questions. Do you want to know how many care-experienced students withdrew in their first year and also how many withdrew at any point? If so would the latter figure include or exclude those who withdrew in the first year? Please clarify this part of your request.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-service...
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/about/introdu...
Yours,
Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London
Dear IMPFOI,
Further to your request, I’ve clarified questions 7, 8 and 9 below:
7 - this refers to students who have withdrawn the same year as enrolment
8 - withdrawals from students at any point in their studies (that is, year by year, how many dropped out regardless of when they started)
9 - for the drop out rate, I’m interested in the data for question 8 against the number enrolled for that academic year.
I hope this provides some clarity.
Thanks
Ethan
Dear Ethan,
Thank you for the clarification. We will respond to your request on or before 1 August.
Yours,
Anita Hunt
Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London
Dear Ethan Moran-Smith,
Thank you for your Freedom of Information Act request. Your request and the College’s response can be found in the College’s FOI Disclosure log under the heading “Admission and withdrawal rates for care-leavers, 2017/18 to 2022/23”.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-service...
Yours,
Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London
Please note that if you are unhappy with the way that we have handled your request, you can ask us to conduct a review. Please make your representation in writing within 2 months of the date you received this response. If you remain dissatisfied with how Imperial College has handled your request, you may then approach the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Dear Imperial College London,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Imperial College London's handling of my FOI request 'Admission Rates and Drop Out Rates for Care-Leavers and Estranged Students 2017/18 to 2022/23'.
In particular, there is a lot of missing information. Of the 8 questions, only 2 were responded to.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...
Yours faithfully,
Ethan
Dear Ethan,
Imperial College replied to your request on 30 June 2023 as follows: Please refer to “Care experienced applicants, offers and places confirmed, past 5 application cycles” in the College FOI Disclosure log. Please refer to the ‘College Statistics Guides’ for information on the total number of applicants, offers made etc. Information about student withdrawals is also available in the College Disclosure log, 'Student withdrawals past five academic years'. See links below. This information addresses your questions 1 – 6 and 10.
Information is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (Section 21) if it is already reasonably accessible to the requester.
We then sought clarification on questions 7, 8 and 9, which you provided on 1 July. We then provided the further information requested. If you believe that the information in the public domain does not address your request, please specify in what way to enable us to conduct a review.
Yours,
Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London
Dear IMPFOI,
You have asked to see the links provided, but I don’t see any links in your response. Would you be happy to attach these?
Thanks
Ethan
Dear Ethan,
The links were provided in our initial response to you dated 30 June, see below. As follows:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-service...
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/about/introdu...
Yours,
Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London
Dear IMPFOI,
Using the links you have provided, the information which I requested has not been provided in full. If you could begin an internal review that would be appreciated. I have specified in the above replies what I am missing.
Yours sincerely,
Ethan
Dear Ethan,
As requested previously, please specify what information you believe has not been provided so that we can understand what information has not been provided and conduct a review.
Yours,
Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London
Dear Ethan,
Please find attached the College's response to your Internal Review.
Yours,
Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London
Dear IMPFOI,
Unfortunately I am not happy with the internal review. The document attached is a repeat of the above messages, both of which contain links to a page where the information requested is not reasonably accessible nor in full. I will forward this to the Information Commissioner to take this to the next stage.
Thanks
Ethan
Dear Ethan,
The Information Commissioner’s Office has contacted us about your
complaint to them. I understand that you have now accepted that the
majority of the information you requested has already been provided. There
is one omission, the information referred to for question 10 does not
provide an overall figure for student withdrawals, which I believe was the
information you wanted. I apologise for this oversight.
I have the information set out below to hand, which does not include
2017/18. Perhaps this would be sufficient for your purposes? Otherwise, I
would need to ask colleagues to generate this information from the
archived student records system.
Year Total undergraduate withdrawals
2018/2019 74
2019/2020 467
2020/2021 606
2021/2022 557
Please note that “no shows”, i.e. the student did not take up the
place on the course, were not documented as withdrawals in our
previous student administration system (used before 2019/20) but are
in the current system. This largely accounts for the jump in the
figures in 2019/20 and subsequently
Yours,
Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London
Dear IMPFOI,
If you could retrieve the information for 2017/18 too, that would be great.
Yours sincerely,
Ethan
Dear Ethan,
We have located the figure for 2017/18 from a previous FOI response on
this topic. The figure for that year was 162.
Yours,
Freedom of Information Team
[1]Imperial College London
_____________________________________________
From: IMPFOI
Sent: 21 September 2023 10:25
To: 'Ethan' <[FOI #995148 email]>
Subject: RE: Internal review of Freedom of Information request - Admission
Rates and Drop Out Rates for Care-Leavers and Estranged Students 2017/18
to 2022/23, IMPFOI-23-379
Dear Ethan,
The Information Commissioner’s Office has contacted us about your
complaint to them. I understand that you have now accepted that the
majority of the information you requested has already been provided. There
is one omission, the information referred to for question 10 does not
provide an overall figure for student withdrawals, which I believe was the
information you wanted. I apologise for this oversight.
I have the information set out below to hand, which does not include
2017/18. Perhaps this would be sufficient for your purposes? Otherwise, I
would need to ask colleagues to generate this information from the
archived student records system.
Year Total undergraduate withdrawals
2018/2019 74
2019/2020 467
2020/2021 606
2021/2022 557
Please note that “no shows”, i.e. the student did not take up the
place on the course, were not documented as withdrawals in our
previous student administration system (used before 2019/20) but are
in the current system. This largely accounts for the jump in the
figures in 2019/20 and subsequently
Yours,
Freedom of Information Team
Imperial College London
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