Information Assurance and Governance
Office of the Principal
7 August 2023
Dear Jichen,
Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
Our Ref: 270-23
I refer to your enquiry dated 14 July 2023 asking to be supplied with information under the
Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (“the FOISA”) as outlined below.
1.
Undergraduate admissions statistics, for all the students by courses from 2018 to 2023
UCAS cycles and for Chinese students by courses from 2018 to 2023 UCAS cycles. (If
the 2023 statistics hasn't been processed, could you please provide the statistics from
2018 to 2022)
For each undergraduate course:
• The number of applications
• The number of offers made
• The number of Chinese applications
• The number of Chinese offers made
Please find attached Appendix A which provides the number of undergraduate applications
and offers (total and country of domicile is mainland China) for entry in academic years
2018/19 to 2022/23 by academic school.
Figures are presented in the form of ‘less than five’ and a data range where the number of
applications and corresponding proportion of offers being reported on are small. There is a
risk that reporting at a more granular level could result in the individuals concerned being
identified revealing information of a personal nature 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.
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.
Information Assurance and Governance
01334 462776
xxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xx.xx
The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No: SC013532
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.
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.
