National Student Survey data: provider-level

The data dashboard allows you to select NSS results, using the filters at the top of the dashboard. You can use the filters to focus on a particular population. For example, when viewing the NSS results for the UK, you can use the filters to focus on those students who are studying full-time, or who are studying a particular subject.

To support easier navigation, question 28 and the healthcare questions are included in the same table as the other questions and themes.

You can sort each column in the table by clicking the arrows in the bottom-left corner of the column header. To restore the default sorting, click the ‘Reset sorting’ button under the ‘Show help’ icon. For further guidance on using the dashboard, select the ‘Show help’ button in the top right-hand corner.

This dashboard contains NSS results presented by registering provider (the provider that has overall control of the higher education content, delivery, assessment and quality assurance arrangements). Users are able to visualise the NSS data using the following filters:

• Provider
• Year (NSS 2026 and/or NSS 2025 data)
• Mode of study
• Subject (at CAH1 and CAH3 level, and All subjects).

In order to maximise the usability of the dashboard we have restricted the filters available to allow users to access headline results easily. Provider level data with all available splits (such as teaching institution, level of study, subject at CAH2 and the results for the healthcare, allied health, and clinical practice placement questions) are available as spreadsheets for both NSS 2026 and NSS 2025.

The dashboard contains multiple filters and it will take a moment to reload the dashboard when each filter is changed. This loading time can vary based on internet speed and the processing power of the device used. We are aware that the dashboard can be particularly slow on the day of the annual NSS publication, due to the high number of users, and we are actively looking for solutions to this.

All the data available on the dashboards can be accessed using our data downloads, which we provide in CSV and Excel format.

As part of ongoing improvements to the dashboard, we have removed the shaded bars that previously illustrated statistical uncertainty. This is because Power BI (the platform we are now using for data visualisations) currently does not allow us to show shaded bars in the same way as Tableau (our previous data visualisation platform).

We will continue to review and develop the dashboard and will monitor user feedback to understand whether additional features – such as the shaded bars – should be reintroduced in future.

Alternatively, in the NSS data dashboard, we show the positivity measure, its difference from benchmark, and the confidence we can have in these comparisons.

Confidence measures help determine whether a difference from the benchmark is likely to reflect a genuine difference in student views rather than random variation, particularly where response numbers are small. The 'Materially below benchmark' measure indicates the confidence that the positivity measure is at least 2.5 percentage points lower than the benchmark. Higher values indicate greater confidence that students are genuinely less positive than similar students across the sector.

Similarly, the 'Materially above benchmark' measure indicates the confidence that the positivity measure is at least 2.5 percentage points higher than the benchmark. Higher values indicate greater confidence that students are genuinely more positive than comparable students across the sector.

The 'Broadly in line with the benchmark' measure indicates confidence that the positivity measure is within 2.5 percentage points of the benchmark in either direction.

These confidence measures provide additional context to the positivity scores and benchmark comparisons, helping users understand how strongly the data supports any apparent differences from sector expectations.

Question 27 ("During your studies, how free did you feel to express your ideas, opinions, and beliefs?") is only asked of students studying in providers in England. Therefore, country-level statistics for Question 27 are not provided for Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, or the UK. 

Question 28 ("Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of the course") is only asked of students studying in providers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Therefore, country-level statistics for Question 28 are not provided for England or the UK. 

Note: Question 28 has a different format from the other survey questions, and five rather than four response options. Because of this, the positivity measure for Question 28 cannot be straightforwardly compared with the positivity measure for the other questions. In particular, we would typically expect the positivity measure for Question 28 to be lower than the positivity measure for the other questions, because we allow respondents to take a neutral stance (“Neither agree nor disagree”).

By changing the filters on the data dashboard, you may arrive at a selection for which no data is available. This would happen, for instance, if you selected the filter “Computing” for a provider that did not offer computing courses. When this happens, you will be presented with the message “Data unavailable”. You can leave this page by choosing a different combination of filters, or by refreshing your browser.

If you receive an error message beginning with '{"result":' when trying to view a dashboard on our website, try closing and restarting your Internet browser. This issue can occur if you have viewed a dashboard on the OfS portal since opening your current browser session.

It is not possible to view our dashboards on the portal and on our website concurrently in the same browser. To switch between them you will need to restart your browser, delete your browser cookies, or use two different browsers.

When NSS results are aggregated at the level of country (UK, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales) we do not calculate benchmarks. This is because the benchmarking method does not create meaningful results in many of these cases. The “Benchmark value %” column will show “N/A” in these cases.

Rarely, we are unable to calculate benchmarks for provider-level data. In some cases, one or more of the benchmarking factors are unknown for most students in a provider/subject/mode split. In these cases, the results are shown as “BK”. Benchmarks are also unavailable in some cases when the provider makes an extremely large contribution to its own benchmark. These results are shown as “N/A”. Similarly, we do not provide benchmarks when results are suppressed as “DPL” or “DP”:

• Data Protection Low (DPL): When the response rate for a publication unit is 100 per cent and all, or nearly all, students responded negatively to a particular question. This is to ensure that students feel able to honestly report poor quality, without the risk of being identified. This suppression is very rare; when it occurs, we indicate that the positivity measure for the question is very low using the marker ‘DPL’, but otherwise provide minimal information.
• Data Protection (DP): When, for a publication unit, a theme includes a question that is DPL-suppressed. In this case, publishing the theme measure could allow data users to infer information about the suppressed DPL measure. We therefore suppress the theme measure too and mark it as ‘DP’ (data protection).