Consultation on publication of NSS 2023 results: our response

The Chartered ABS submitted a response to the OfS’s consultation on its proposed approach for publishing the results for the 2023 National Student Survey (NSS). The revised NSS includes additional questions to gain more in-depth data about students’ perceptions of their academic experience. These updates require changes to how the NSS results will be presented and the OfS asked for views on the implications. Our response was informed by input from colleagues within the learning and teaching community at our member schools.

The consensus view from our members was that the publication of the NSS results should be broadly in line with the approach used for prior years as it is crucial that institutions are able to analyse their results at subject-level and to benchmark performance against peer groups of similar providers. Our members welcome the proposal to expand the split data at both sector and provider level as this has the potential to drive improvements in teaching for specific groups of students. They also fully support the addition of the apprenticeships marker and the new questions on health and wellbeing as it is important to look at how effective courses are in supporting these.

While the proposals for publication under the revised NSS are sensible, our members would welcome a period of stability for the survey so that it can continue to serve as a useful source of information on course satisfaction for prospective students. The disruption caused by Covid-19 significantly reduced the comparability of the results to prior years. These changes will further reduce comparability of the data and will require clear and careful caveating to reduce the risk of misleading interpretations.

You can read our full response here.