Date of response: 05 July 2024
We have now considered your request of 23 June 2024 for the following information:
Question 1. I would like to know about the age distribution of first year students for A100 in intervals of 5 years. This should be sufficient to ensure GDPR compliance, while making sure that the data is meaningful.
To clarify, I am requesting the age ranges of the first year cohorts from September 2013 to September 2023 inclusive. Where the age ranges follow the pattern of:
18-22 (inclusive)
23-27 (inclusive)
and so on.
Our response:
Please note that the University record age demographics in intervals of four, rather than of five as requested, therefore we have provided the age bands as such in the following table.
| | 16-20 | 21-24 | 25-34 | 35-44 | 45-54 |
| 2013-14 | 141 | 26 | <5 | 0 | 0 |
| 2014-15 | 146 | 20 | <5 | <5 | 0 |
| 2015-16 | 149 | 17 | <5 | 0 | <5 |
| 2016-17 | 157 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017-18 | 139 | 28 | <5 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018-19 | 179 | 9 | <5 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019-20 | 205 | 20 | <5 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020-21 | 174 | 55 | 8 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021-22 | 165 | 31 | 7 | <5 | 0 |
| 2022-23 | 182 | 26 | 8 | <5 | 0 |
| 2023-24 | 186 | 17 | <5 | 0 | 0 |
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. However, due to the small numbers involved, we consider these details are exempt from disclosure under Section 40(2) of the FOI Act.
Due to the small numbers involved, it would be possible to identify a living individual(s) from this information and, therefore, we would consider it to be personal data. Disclosure of this personal data would contravene the first data protection principle of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that being Principle (a) – lawfulness, fairness, and transparency. We consider that disclosure would constitute unfair processing of the data as any individual would reasonably expect for their data to remain confidential and not released to the public. The University is only permitted to disclose personal data if to do so would be fair, lawful, and transparent. Therefore, the requirements of this exemption are met, and we are unable 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 1 and 4 in relation to the number of individuals with the value ‘<5’.
Question 2. Also, how many of the A100 cohort already have first degrees?
Our response:
| Year | No. of A100 MBBS Medicine students with a first degree (in any subject) |
| 2013 | 32 |
| 2014 | 26 |
| 2015 | 23 |
| 2016 | 33 |
| 2017 | 28 |
| 2018 | 18 |
| 2019 | 20 |
| 2020 | 50 |
| 2021 | 27 |
| 2022 | 33 |
| 2023 | 17 |