Deadline approaching: HEAT upload

23 Mar 2023

The deadline for submitting activity is Friday, 31 March

If you have carried out Access and Success (A&S) activity this term, you must input tracking data to HEAT (the Higher Education Access Tracker) by Friday, 31 March.

If you need support accessing HEAT or have any questions not answered in this news story, please contact HEATsupport@manchester.ac.uk and a member of the Access and Student Success, Monitoring and Evaluation Team will support you.

Why do we need to do this?

We need to upload our A&S activity data regularly to ensure we get an accurate picture of our work throughout the year. Having an accurate and (almost) live view of our data allows us to understand what types of activities we're delivering throughout the year and ensures you can answer any questions you may receive from schools about the types of interactions we've had with them, how many of their students we've supported and what the long-term impact of our work with these students is. The last point is especially important as HEAT allows us to track the students we support, through their education journey to see their GCSE outcomes and if they enter into Higher Education.

How do I input my data?

If you’re new to HEAT, or need a refresher, then check out the ‘Introducing HEAT’ demo that the Monitoring and Evaluation team ran in 2020. These demos were recorded and are now available as videos on the Evaluation Resource Bank. The videos that explain the data import process are:

• 2. Manually creating activity records (10 mins)
• 3. Manually creating student records (5 mins)

If you have a lot of activities to add then you can use a bulk import template. Details of how to use this are explained in the following demo videos:

• 6. Bulk uploading activities (7 mins)
• 7. Bulk uploading students and schools/colleges (7 mins)

Further support

• Resources you may need to upload your activitives
• Find an institution’s HEAT ID using the Manchester Prioritisation Model (MPM) Power BI report

What title should I give to my activity?

The activity title should be unique and should include: the activity name - date - school/college name (e.g. EPQ 01/01/2023 - Holy Cross). This allows us to make sure that there isn't any confusion between the activities and that attendees are added to the right event. 

Do I need to enter my activity data into the School and Colleges Outreach Log (SCOL) as well?

If you have a HEAT account, you do not need to enter your A&S Activity details into the SCOL. The SCOL is only for staff who run 1-2 A&S activities a year and have not recorded student registers. Where possible staff should aim to add student level data to HEAT.

What student details should I add to my activities?

Where possible, all staff should be collecting learner level data to support HEATs tracking capabilities (N.B. please only do this if the students have had sight of our HEAT tracking statement). Tracking information includes:

• First name
• Last name
• Date of birth
• School/college
• Home postcode
• Gender (if known)
• First generation HE
• Free school meals

Please note that we encourage you to include First generation HE and Free school meals data when adding the student details.

If you can’t add student tracking details, then please add a total number of students instead. This helps with our reporting.

Below is a table that outlines when we're able to get tracking reports on students by the year that they would enter HE if they joined at 18:

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I have activity data, but I don't know what schools I worked with. What can I do?

If you’re not sure which schools the students you worked with are from, then you can add the total number of students via the ‘Unknown Beneficiary’ account. You can do this by going to the beneficiary tab of an activity, click ‘add new beneficiary’ and search ‘Unknown Beneficiary’. This will then allow you to add a total number of students to your activity. The details of the ‘Unknown Beneficiary’ account are Unknown Institution [Open] - E (#052923).

How do I get access to HEAT?

• If you require a HEAT login to enter activity details into the system please contact HEATsupport@manchester.ac.uk