Business Assurance
5th Floor
Information
James Clerk Maxwell Building
Compliance
57 Waterloo Road
London
SE1 8WA
Tel: 020 7848 7816
Email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xx.xx
L. Maskell
By email only to: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
20 July 2018
Dear Mr Maskell,
Request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”)
Further to your recent request for information held by King’s College London, I am writing
to confirm that some of the requested information is held by the university.
Your request
We received your information request on 12 July 2018 and have treated it as a request for
information made under section 1(1) of the Act.
Please can you publish your selection and shortlisting criteria for the Clinical Doctorate in Psychology based
at the IoPPN, providing details of the numbers of students at each stage of the shortlisting process, broken
down by gender, age and ethnicity.
In regards to personal statements, please provide details of your marking structure and selection criteria for
shortlisting. If this varies by year, then please provide the marking criteria for the 2018 entry intake.
In terms of successful students admitted onto the course, please provide details of how many students
admitted onto the course worked at the IoPPN prior to their interview. Please break this down by the
number of students per year in comparison to the number of places offered and provide this data for the past
5 years.
Our response
Please see attached excel document which outlines the gender, age and ethnicity of
applicants at each stage of the shortlisting process as well as those who had worked in the
faculty at the time of application or previously. Where the total number of applicant is 5 or
under, the university has replaced the figure with ‘equal to or less than five’ (≤5). The
university considers that it is reasonably likely that students could be identified from the
low numbers. Such identification would constitute a breach of one of the principles set out
in the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). This approach is in accordance with the
Information Commissioner’s Office Code of Practice on Anonymisation. This information
is therefore exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of the Act. This is an absolute
exemption which means that the university does not need to consider the public interest in
disclosing the information, we only need to establish that the exemption has been
engaged.
The methodology the university has adopted is a variation of the HESA standard rounding
and suppression method. Numbers that are five or fewer are replaced with “≤5 (less than or
equal to five)”; when needed to prevent potential identification all other numbers are
rounded to the nearest multiple of five (halves are rounded upwards).
Full details of the HESA methodology can be found on their website:
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/about/regulation/data-protection/rounding-and-
suppression-anonymise-statistics The information relating to marking structure is being withheld in accordance with section
43(2) of the Act – Commercial Interests. Potential applicants who know the scoring criteria
would have an unfair advantage over other applicants, particularly as they will be able to
write their application in such a way as to gain the maximum score possible – even if they
don’t meet our usual high standards of academic achievement and clinical experience. In
addition, the university considers that release of the information is likely to prejudice the
commercial interests of the university, namely the ability of the university to attract the
best students, staff and greatest level of funding.
It would not have a direct monetary effect on us at the outset, however students on our
course are funded employees of the NHS. We pride ourselves on having the highest
application per place ratio in the country for a programme of our type and a potential effect
of releasing this into the public domain could be a significant drop in our application
numbers should the scoring criteria be misinterpreted (it needs context). Such a loss of
demand may in the future impact on the number of commissioned places we have. Our
course is a very competitive one to get onto and we are aware that rumours have remained
for years about every applicant needing a PhD, etc which is not true but hard to dispel.
Releasing this to the public domain would therefore set us back on the hard work we have
done, and I believe affect our reputation
This is a qualified exemption and requires the consideration of a public interest test;
assessing whether the balance of the public interest favours disclosing the information or
maintaining the exemption. In this case we have considered that the public interest favours
non-disclosure. It is in the public interest for the university to be able to fairly attract best
candidates and maintain its position as a world leading university.
This completes the university’s response to your information request.
Your right to complain
If you are unhappy with the service, you have received in relation to your information
request or feel that it has not been properly handled you have the right to complain or request
a review of our decision by contacting the Assistant Director of Business Assurance
(Information Compliance) within 60 days of the date of this letter.
Further information about our internal complaints procedure is available at the link below:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/college/policyzone/assets/files/governance_and_legal/Freedom_of
_Information_Policy_updated_Oct_%202011.pdf If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint you may apply to the Information
Commissioner for a decision. Generally, the Information Commissioner cannot make a
decision unless you have exhausted the internal complaints procedure provided by King’s
College London.
The Information Commissioner can be contacted at the following address:
The Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Yours sincerely
Jade Roche
Information Compliance
