Northern Ireland Further Education Enrolments by Administrative Geography, 2013/14 Onwards

Enrolments on regulated courses at Northern Ireland Further Education institutions are gathered annually. The data is derived from the Consolidated Data Return from 2013/14 onwards and from the Further Education Statistical Record prior to that. The Department extracts and validates the information from colleges before it is forwarded to NINIS.

Use Cases

• Analyzing enrolment trends over time based on the annual collection cycle mentioned in the description.
• Mapping the geographic distribution of further education participation based on the administrative geographies in the title.
• Assessing the impact of policy changes on regulated course uptake based on the shift in data sources from 2013/14.
• Comparing enrolment patterns across different administrative areas in Northern Ireland.

Strengths

• Data is gathered annually at a consistent point (1st November) for a full academic year.
• The description specifies a clear temporal boundary for the data source methodology, shifting in 2013/14.
• The dataset is published under the OGL-UK-3.0 license, which permits reuse.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to being solely from Northern Ireland.

Provenance

Source

OpenDataNI

Collection Method

Collected via college enrolment forms, entered into Management Information Systems, extracted and validated by the Department, merged with CPD, and forwarded to NINIS.

Time Range

Covers academic years, with data gathered annually for the previous year (e.g., 1 August 2014 - 31 July 2015 for the 2014/15 academic year).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:12.900785; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Northern Ireland, by administrative geographies.