The NSS is managed by the OfS on behalf of the UK funding and regulatory bodies - the Department for the Economy (Northern Ireland), The Scottish Funding Council and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.
The NSS gathers students’ opinions on the quality of their courses which helps to:
- inform prospective students’ choices
- provide data that supports universities and colleges to improve the student experience
- support public accountability.
Every university in the UK takes part in the NSS, as do many colleges. Response rates are consistently high.
About the 2021 survey
For NSS 2021, the OfS and the UK funding and regulatory bodies have chosen to include a new set of questions in the NSS questionnaire to ask students about specific aspects of their experience during the pandemic.
Students can choose whether to answer these questions and submit their feedback on this topic after they have completed the core questions.
- This year has been a year like no other. We felt it important to ask students about this aspect of their experience, particularly as the main survey focuses on their entire higher education experience
- We hope the information will be useful for providers in informing them about how students saw their responses to the pandemic
- We won’t use the data for student information so we would not publish at course level, though providers will see their own data
- We may publish the data nationally, as we have with smaller sample opinion polls, but decisions on what we publish from the whole NSS and how will be taken after rigorous quality testing of responses
- If we were to publish the results of the COVID-19 questions at provider level, we would only do so after a proper consultative representations process.
See the complete questionnaire used for the NSS 2021.
NSS results are published on the Discover Uni website.
Download a complete archive of data from the National Student Survey
See the complete questionnaire used for the National Student Survey 2021
