FOI_25-158 Admissions via INTO UEA
Date of response: 13 June 2025
We have now considered your request of 22 May 2025 for the following information:
Please could you provide the following data for each of the last three academic years (e.g. 2021/22, 2022/23, and 2023/24):
Question 1. The number of international students enrolled in Foundation programmes delivered through your partnership with INTO, or any other Foundation provider.
Our response:
| 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 |
|---|---|---|
| 133 | 104 | 139 |
Question 2. A breakdown of these students by country or region of origin (e.g. Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Middle East, etc.).
Our response:
| Country of origin | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Latin America | <5 | <5 | <5 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 6 | 8 | 5 |
| South Asia | 6 | <5 | <5 |
| Middle East | 19 | 23 | 77 |
| North America | >5 | >5 | >5 |
| Europe | 11 | <5 | 7 |
| East Asia | 82 | 58 | 44 |
| Russia and North Asia | <5 | 7 | 5 |
Values marked fewer than five <5: Section 40 (2) exemption explanation:
On this occasion, it is not possible to provide all the requested information. The Act contains several exemptions that allow public authorities to withhold certain information from release. We have applied the following exemption to part of your request.
| Exemption | Reason |
|---|---|
| S.40(2), Personal information | Disclosure of some of the requested information would be contrary to the requirements of the UK General Data Protection Regulation |
We can confirm that the University does hold this data, and we believe that the requested information, constitutes the personal data of individuals, as defined by Article 4(1) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, due to the small numbers involved, we consider these details are exempt from disclosure under Section 40(2) of the FOI Act.
We believe that disclosure this data would be contrary to the requirements of Article 5(1)(a) of the GDPR; namely that information must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner. These individuals would have no expectation that this information would be made publicly available, and we have not identified a lawful basis that would allow or require us to disclose this information. To ensure that we do not inadvertently release personal data in this response or in combination with other publicly available data, we have replaced all values between 0 and 4 in relation to the number of individuals with the value ‘<5’.
Question 3. The number of international students enrolled in Foundation programmes outside the provider relationship (i.e. directly recruited or through other channels), also broken down by region of origin and progression outcomes.
If your institution does not hold this data in disaggregated form, or if certain elements are managed by your external partner, I kindly ask that you provide any information available to the university, including summaries, reports, or aggregate data that may have been shared with or received from the provider.
Our response:
On this occasion it is not possible to provide any of the requested information. In line with your rights under section 1(1)(a) of the Act to be informed whether information is held, we confirm that the University does not hold any recorded information for the number of international students enrolled in Foundation programmes outside of the provider relationship, broken down by region and progression outcomes.
INTO UEA is our only foundation provider relationship for which we hold information and therefore we do not hold any progression outcomes for those enrolled outside of this partnership.