Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Student Voice in Higher Education is used to help prospective students.
The National Student Survey was established in 2005 as part of a quality assurance process of all institutions offering degrees and other forms of Higher education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Survey is commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Department of Employment and Learning (DEL NI).
The National Student Survey 2009 was published this month, just in time for prospective students and parents to pour over the details of which University scored the best rating in each of the 27 criteria. As they looked at where was "best" for Teaching Resources or student perception of Quality of Assessment, the debate over the usefulness of the survey got underway amongst many of the Academics and institutions it reports on.
There are some in the world of Higher Education who do not feel the survey is fair or useful. Last year there was the suggestion that a University had been using persuasive measures to gain positive feedback from students.
However, with 220,00 students taking part in the survey last year (largest ever response) providing their views on 27 different aspects of their University course experience and the whole thing being conducted by the world's most established polling agency, Ipsos Mori, there is a lot to be heard.
The questionnaire is offered to all under-graduate final year students, with questions in 6 areas as well as being asked to give an overall rating:
Many Universities hear and listen to the student voice expressed in the survey. (The comments are passed on to all Higher Education Institutions and their Student Unions. For example, for a few years Feedback to students by Tutors came out as persistently rated poor by students across many universities, which caused some universities to address this with their staff. These interventions have now led to useful change in courses and methods.
Janice Kay, Deputy Vice- Chancellor of Exeter University supports the survey.
"You can see the usefulness of it as long as one listens to what students are saying and then does something about it."
The survey is used to compile Best University Guides, along with other data and all results are put on the Unistats website with public access through this site.