FOI_26-228 Students who interrupted or withdrew from studies on health grounds

Date of response: 06 October 2026

We have now considered your request of 15 September 2026 for the following information:

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting information about students who interrupted or withdrew from their studies on mental health grounds.

All figures should be counts only; I am not requesting the names of students or any other personal data, and nothing requested here identifies any individual.

For the purposes of this request:

“Interruption” means a temporary suspension of studies, however your institution describes it (intermission, leave of absence, suspension of registration, authorised break in study), after which the student is expected to return.

“Withdrawal” means the permanent ending of a student’s registration before completion of their course, whether initiated by the student or the institution.

“Mental health grounds” means any interruption or withdrawal recorded in your student records system under a reason code, category or free-text reason relating to mental health, mental illness, psychological wellbeing, stress or anxiety, or where a health reason has been recorded as mental rather than physical. If your institution records health reasons without distinguishing mental from physical, please say so and provide the health-reasons figure instead.

“Academic year” means 1 August to 31 July. Figures for 2025/26 may be provided as provisional if your records for that year have not yet been finalised, and should be marked as such.

Question 1. For each of the five academic years 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26, please state:

a) the number of interruptions recorded on mental health grounds;

b) the total number of withdrawals recorded for any reason.

c) the number of withdrawals recorded on mental health grounds.

Question 2. For the mental health figures at 1(a) and 1(c) in each year, please break the numbers down by:

a) undergraduate and postgraduate;

b) home (UK) and international fee status.

Question 3. Of the students who interrupted on mental health grounds in each of the academic years 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24, please state how many had resumed their studies by 31 July 2026.

Question 4. Please state the total number of students registered at your institution in each of the five academic years, so that the figures above can be expressed as a rate.

Please provide the answers in the table/spreadsheet format that preserves the year-by-year and category breakdowns.

If the full request would exceed the appropriate limit, please answer questions 1 and 4 in full and then apply your section 16 duty by either (i) answering questions 2 and 3 for the three most recent academic years only, or (ii) answering question 2 only. Please treat this as advance confirmation that I accept whichever refinement brings the request within the limit, so that it can be actioned without a further exchange.

Our response:

Please see accompanying document, our ref: FOI_26-228 Appendix A.

Please note that the University’s central student record system does not categorise interruptions to study, or withdrawals for ‘mental’ health reasons. We do not distinguish between physical health and mental health as reasons why a student is interrupting or withdrawing from their studies.

Therefore, for question 1 we have provided the number of students interrupting their students for ‘health reasons’ and the number of students withdrawing due to ‘health reasons’ as per your request.

For question 2, again, we have provide the breakdown of figures for students citing 'health reasons’, and not mental health reasons specifically.