The Office for Students (OfS) published data for the 2023 National Student Survey (NSS) on 10 August 2023.
Seventy percent of our final year students responded to the NSS.
The wide-ranging changes to the questions, response options, and the response scale, as well as significant changes to the way the OfS provides data sets, mean we cannot easily compare our absolute scores to previous years and we no longer have an overall satisfaction score that we can compare to the sector.
Using the new questions and scoring, we achieved an 80% positivity score for four of the seven survey themes. This year the most valid assessment of our performance is in relation to benchmarks*, and from this we appear to be slightly ahead of many of our direct competitors.
At a University-level, despite the good scores in several themes, there are other dimensions of student experience that need further review and improvement. This autumn we will be launching a suite of new projects to support colleagues to transform our students’ experience of assessment, their sense of community, and their voices being heard in their programmes.
Subject-level data is being carefully prepared, given this year’s complex outcomes. A full data release will be made in early September through faculty reports and Power BI dashboards, and we will work with schools and faculties on action plans, with a particular focus on thematic areas that are persistently challenging and in subjects with lower-than-expected performance.
At the same time as the NSS (final year students only) we run our own Southampton Student Survey (SSS) which is completed by all other undergraduate students. Typically, this is a good predictor of NSS and the experience of those in their penultimate year. The 2023 SSS has maintained consistency of questions and methodology and the results are very similar to last year, which are overall positive.
We will be working with SUSU and student representatives to significantly increase the response rate, currently 14%, so that more of our students have the opportunity to tell us what we are doing well and where improvements can be made. We will also be reviewing how to close the gap on taking action and establishing a feedback loop with those students.
*Benchmark reflects the sector average percentage but adjusted to reflect the provider-specific mix of students and subjects at the provider.