That spreadsheet tell a very interesting story, and unlike the extract from the governors minutes which was posted yesterday, those figures do suggest that Asda have been telling porkies, or have been misinformed by the college.
That said, the Asda letter referred to student data for the 'past four years' but those figures are for 2007 - 2010. Until we see the 2011 figures we don't know for certain what the 'past four years' trend has been. But we do know from those governors minutes that Cheadle undershot its target in 2011, so we can assume that the position is no better for last year.
The only other thing people need to know is that those figures are raw enrolments - they don't differentiate between a full-time student taking three A levels and someone who just pops in for a needlework class on a Tuesday evening. So if one of the campuses has a disproportionately high number of part-time enrolments it completely distorts any attempt at comparison.
The really meaningful figures are known as 'full-time equivalents' (FTEs for short), in which part-time enrolments are separated out from the full-time, and then added together to make full-time equivalents. I seem to recall that the usual formula is a multiple of ten part-time enrolments = 1 FTE. So if we really want to compare the position at Cheadle with the position at Marple, we need to see their FTEs. But I'll leave it to one of you FOI enthusiasts to chase that.
Who was it who said 'there's lies, there's damn lies, and there's statistics'!
