PIR FAQs

A: Yes, if the staff member meets the following requirements at the reference date:

• are members of staff
• have an effective substantive appointment
• have current duties which require them to undertake work undertaken in either:
  • an academic organisational unit;
  • an academic support services organisational unit;
  • a student services organisational unit;
  • a public services organisational unit or a general institution services organisational unit; or
  • an independent operation, but only if it is a controlled entity

A: No, your CEO does not need to log on to HEIMS Online to sign off your organisation's verification reports. You can export your reports from HEIMS Online to show to your CEO or their nominated delegate. Once their approval has been received your data it can be certified on their behalf by signing off on the reports in HEIMS Online.

A: The reports you need to sign off are in the Data Verification tab in HEIMS Online. When you are selecting the year for your reports:

• select 2020 to see your Staff reports
• select 2019 to see your Student and Past Course Completions reports

See the Certification tab on HEIMSHELP for more information & coding notes on these reports.

A: Your file must have exactly the right file name to be imported to HEIMS. If your file has ".txt" extension, you will need to delete this extension from your files before trying to import to HEPCAT.

Our Excel to Flat File user guide will provide you with detailed information on how to convert data in a spreadsheet format into a file you can import into HEPCAT.

A: Your Course of Study, Student and Past Course Completions submissions should contain data for the 2019 reporting year. Every record in the file will have a reporting year and period (Element 415) of 20191.

Your Half Year Load Estimates submission should only include students enrolled between 1 January and 30 June 2020. The reporting year and period (Element 415) for this file is 20201.

A: For all staff data submissions the reporting year and period (Element 415) is 20201

This includes

• your Full‑time and Fractional Full‑time Staff submission. The reference date (Element 513) is the 'point in time' date you choose. This can be any date between 31 March and 30 June 2020. Once you have selected the date you report all FT/FFT as employed on that date. Every record in the file will have a reporting year and period of 20201
• your Casual/Sessional staff – this applies whether you are using calendar year ("Method 1") to calculate actual casual FTE from 2019 , or financial year ("Method 2") to calculate casual staff FTE based on the 2019/18 financial year. The reporting year and period is always 20201.

Where possible, TEQSA and the department encourage all providers to use Method 1 – Calendar Year as this aligns with the establishment of a national data collection that has a consistent foundation for the calculation of all casual staff data.

Q: If staff left or came in half way through 2019, is the information recorded the same as if they were there the entire calendar year?

A: The specifications for reporting Full‑time, Fractional Full‑time and Casual academic staff data are outlined in the HEIMS PIR Scope and Data Element specification documents.

Full‑time and Fractional Full‑time Staff:

• Consistent with previous PIRs and as noted in the data element specifications against element 513 the reference date may be determined by the higher education provider as a 'point in time' at a date between 31 March and 30 June 2020. All full‑time and fractional staff employed by the HEP as at this reference date, should be reported.

For Casual/Sessional staff

• For reporting to the PIR, providers can choose one of two methods for calculating casual staff FTE. The first method ("Method 1") is consistent with the department and measures actual casual FTE from the year preceding the reference year. Providers that use this method will report Casual/Sessional staff for year preceding the current reference year. In the 2020 PIR, providers would therefore report all casual academic staff in calendar year 2019.
• Providers may also use a second method ("Method 2") to calculate casual staff FTE based on group certificate data from annual group certificates in the financial year. Providers that use this method will report casual/sessional staff for the latest financial year. In the 2020 PIR, providers would therefore report all casual academic staff in financial year 2019/19.

A: The existing TEQSA templates have been replaced by 5 data submissions that will be reported using HEPCAT. These are the:

• PIR Student (PSD)
• Course of Study (PCO)
• Past Course Completions (PPS)
• Staff (PSF); and
• Half Year Load Estimates (PLE).

A: The department has training available on how to enter your financial data into HITS. A webinar video on this topic is available by contacting us at HEenquiries [at] education.gov.au. The HITS user guide is available for this application which you can access from the Useful links page or at Opens in a new window: http://education.gov.au/hits-user-guide-and-training-videos.

A: All PIR data must be reported and certified by 30 June 2020 and may include the following submissions:

• Course of Study
• Half Year Load Estimates
• Past Course Completions
• Staff
• Student

Q: The 2019 PIR staff data collection had Element 408 (Staff Data) as an alternative to Element 423 (Equivalent FT annual salary - current duties) and vice versa. In the 2020 PIR, Element 508 (Equivalent full‑time salary range - current duties) is an alternative to Element 408 PIR (Current duties classification type), however, there is no confirmation if element 408 is also an alternative to element 588. Can you confirm?

A: Element 588 is an alternative to Element 408 PIR (Current duties classification type). If a suitable classification is not available under Element 408 then a salary range for each staff member should be provided.

A: No. The HELP IT System (HITS) system currently has its own logon security system.

A: Financial data is submitted through the HELP IT System (HITS). TEQSA will continue to collect survey data from providers that do not participate in the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) program. TEQSA will contact non‑QILT participants to outline the process for submitting survey data to TEQSA for the 2020 PIR.