Data sources
What we use, what we publish, what we don't
A short, factual page for anyone — particularly journalists, parents, or institutional partners — who wants the full picture of where the data comes from and how it flows through the product.
Primary sources
- Freedom of Information disclosures from UK universities — module grade distributions, cohort sizes, year-on-year trends. Filed in personal capacity and archived publicly on WhatDoTheyKnow.
- Discover Uni — the official UK government dataset on undergraduate courses and outcomes. Used for course-level context only.
- HESA Graduate Outcomes — the public sector authority on UK graduate destinations. Used for course-level employment context.
- University course handbooks and module catalogues — for module descriptions, prerequisites, assessment breakdowns, credit values.
What we publish on indexable pages
- Banded First-rate signal (low / mid / high)
- Banded mean-mark descriptor (e.g. “Low 2:1 territory”)
- Banded cohort size (small / medium / large)
- Year range covered (e.g. 2015–2023)
- Module description, credits, level, optional/core flag
What we never publish on indexable pages
- Exact percentages of any grade band
- Exact cohort sizes
- Per-year breakdowns
- Rows with cohort < 10
- Anything that could plausibly be tied back to an individual student or academic
What logged-in users see
Inside the paid product, users see the exact distribution, year-by-year breakdown, and comparisons between sibling modules. The aggregate data is the same; the format is different.
Update cadence
FOI responses arrive on universities' own schedules. New universities are added when their first multi-year disclosure is normalised and validated. Existing universities get refreshed annually, typically in autumn term once the prior academic year's results are finalised.