Information Assurance and Governance
Office of the Principal
7 November 2023
Dear Franciska,
Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
Our Ref: 455-23
I refer to your enquiry received on 10 October 2023 asking to be supplied with the following
information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (“the FOISA”):
• Undergraduate admissions statistics for the French and Management courses for the last
five years;
• Information be broken down into Scottish, RUK and Overseas fee statutes, offers
(conditional and unconditional) and acceptances; and
• Average typical grades achieved by the offer holders.
Please find attached Appendix A which provides the number of full time equivalent
applications, offers and acceptances for the MA (Hons) French and Management, French
courses, and Management courses for entry in academic years 2019/20 to 2023/24 broken
down by fee status.
Personal Information
Where the number of acceptances being reported on is small, the exact figure is withheld
along with corresponding applications/ offers data and instead presented in the form of less
than 5. Disclosure of information at such a granular level would result in the release of
personal information where there is no expectation of this happening and release would
therefore be unfair.
This would contravene data protection principle 1(a) in Article 5(1) of the General Data
Protection Regulation i.e. that personal data shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a
transparent manner.
Information Assurance and Governance
01334 462776
xxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xx.xx
The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No: SC013532
Disclosure of information under the FOISA is release of information into the public domain
and by extension, members of the University community. It is through this route that
identification is most likely to occur when the data is taken in conjunction with other data that
could potentially come into the possession of another.
The exemption available at section 38(1)(b),
Personal Information of the FOISA is being
applied in this respect. This is an absolute exemption on not subject to the public interest
test.
Information not held
The University does not hold information in relation to qualifications in a reportable and
verifiable format and it is not therefore possible to answer to your request for ‘average typical
grades’ from the records that we hold. Information is recorded in free text and includes all
qualifications submitted as part of an application some of which are irrelevant; there is no
easy way to determine which grades were considered as part of the admission process
without: a detailed review of applications on an individual basis; validation of the relevant
data; and a level of intellectual input which goes beyond data-retrieval.
This part of your enquiry cannot be answered by simply locating and retrieving data from the
records that we hold requiring new information to be created which is out-with the provisions
of the FOISA.
Section 17 of the FOISA requires that a Scottish public authority confirms in writing where
information requested of it is not held and notice is therefore given to this effect.
For your information, you will find details of entry requirements on our website at:
https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/subjects/entry/ .
Your right to seek a review of how your information request was managed
If you are not satisfied with the University’s response and/or our reasoning set-out above, you
have the right to request a review of our decision. The timelines in which this right is available
are set out in section 20(5)(a) and (b) FOISA. In broad terms the right to seek a review must
be exercised within 40 working days of receiving this response.
Any request for review at this time should be sent by email to
xxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xx.xx stating:
a) your name and address;
b) details of your original request; and
c) the reasons why you are dissatisfied with our response.
If you remain dissatisfied with how your request for information has been dealt with following
Review, you also have the right to apply to the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) for a
decision. In the event of an appeal to the SIC, the Commissioner will generally only be able
to investigate the matters raised in the request for review.
Details on how to make an appeal online to the SIC can be found on their website:
http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Unhappywiththeresponse/AppealingtoCommis
sioner.aspx .
This concludes the University’s response.
Yours sincerely
JUNE WEIR
Information Assurance and Governance Officer
Enc.
Information Assurance and Governance
01334 462776
xxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xx.xx
The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No: SC013532
