National Student Survey - NSS

In 2020 the Office for Students (OfS) and the UK funding and regulatory bodies began a two-stage review of the NSS with an aim to ensure the NSS remains fit for purpose and continues to support regulation and student information across the UK.

In 2022, we consulted on potential changes to the NSS that would take effect from 2023, and we have now published the analysis of responses and our decisions.

As a result, the survey questions and response scales have changed for NSS 2023. The changes include:

• a new 4-point item specific response scales will replace the Likert response scale
• a new additional question on mental wellbeing services
• a new additional question on freedom of expression, which will be asked to students in England only
• the final summative question will be asked to students in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland only.

The optional bank questions and their response scales will remain the same. These will be explored further in 2023-24.

We have also updated the methodology used for identifying students who are eligible for the healthcare, allied health and clinical practice placements questions (previously known as NHS practice placement questions). This expands coverage of these questions to include all students studying a course that is associated with a health or social care regulatory body. This includes students studying pre-registration nursing, midwifery, allied health profession, social work and clinical practice subjects.

See the full list of NSS 2023 questions

For NSS 2022, the core questions did not change, but there were a few changes to parts of the survey in agreement with the UK funding and regulatory bodies:

• To reduce the burden on universities and colleges during and in the aftermath of the pandemic, providers in England were not required to promote the survey to their students.
• All providers were automatically included in a booster phase to send additional reminders to their non-responding students if their response rates were below 43 per cent.
• The questions about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the student experience were not repeated in the 2022 survey.
• As part of the NSS review, a pilot survey ran alongside the NSS 2022 survey between January and March 2022 for a sample of students.

Providers can access their own detailed NSS results including subject-level question responses and open text comments results via the NSS Results Portal.

The NSS data is published in the same way as in previous years; however, there are minor changes in the way the data is presented:

• Alongside the NSS 2022 results, an average agreement rate based on the results from 2020, 2021 and 2022, with each year weighted evenly, is published.
• Healthcare placement questions are not published as part of the NSS data on the OfS website. The publication of this data is in review for 2023. Providers are able to receive their own responses to these questions through the NSS Results Portal.

See the complete questionnaire used for the National Student Survey 2022 (PDF)

For NSS 2021, the core questions did not change, but there were a few changes to parts of the survey which had been developed in agreement with the UK funding and regulatory bodies:

• To reduce the burden on universities and colleges during the pandemic, providers in England were not required to promote the 2021 survey to their students.
• All providers were automatically included in a booster phase to send additional reminders to their non-responding students if their response rates were below 43 per cent.
• A new set of questions were included to ask students about specific aspects of their experience during the coronavirus pandemic. Students chose whether to answer these additional questions and submitted their feedback on this topic after they completed the core questions.

The COVID-19 question results were not published at provider level, but the findings were presented by several broader sector splits such as subject and mode.

Providers can access their own detailed NSS results including subject-level question responses, open text comments and COVID-19 question results via the NSS Results Portal.

To see information on how the NSS results and Covid-19 question results could be used by providers, please see the related FAQs.

The NSS data was published in the same way as in previous years; however the OfS and UK funding and regulatory bodies took some decisions in the way that the NSS 2021 data was presented:

• Alongside the NSS 2021 results, an average agreement rate based on the results from 2019, 2020 and 2021, with each year weighted evenly, was published.
• The 2021 statistics are based purely on 2021 data.
• NHS placement questions are not published as part of the NSS data on the OfS website. Providers are able to receive their own responses to these questions through the NSS Results Portal.

See the complete questionnaire used for the NSS 2021.