As many of you will be aware, we worked with Department for Education to secure access to individual-level free school meals (FSM) data for English 18 and 19 year old applicants for your 2021 cycle applicants this summer.We are pleased to announce that we are on track to supply this data throughout the 2022 cycle from the 15 October.
In addition, we will continue to supply MEM2 data (formerly known as MEM2021) which calculates the probability of your English 18 and 19 year old applicants entering higher education based on several equality factors. MEM2 incorporates:
- free school meals
- where applicants live, using POLAR4 data
- income deprivation affecting children index (IDACI)
- school type
Additionally, a further variant, MEM1 (formerly known as MEM) is available for all UK domiciled applicants – this incorporates POLAR4 data, index of multiple deprivation (IMD) and school type. We continue to engage with governments across the UK to enrich the range of contextual data and information that we can supply to our university and college customers.
Feedback
We would like to hear your feedback on how you’ve made use of FSM and MEM data so far, and how you plan to for the 2022 cycle. This will help us continue to adapt our contextual data services to best suit your needs and ensure that we can continue to supply FSM data for future cycles.
Please send any feedback to mcds@ucas.ac.uk
Signing up for FSM data
Existing modernised contextualised data service (MCDS) customers will automatically receive data on their 2022 cycle applicants.
If you’re new to MCDS, and would like to receive FSM and MEM data for the 2022 cycle, simply complete our web form. The MCDS data will be transferred to you as a CSV file via MOVEIT.
If you have any questions or would like to change the frequency of your MCDS data supplies to daily, weekly or monthly, please email mcds@ucas.ac.uk.