It’s common in some universities to use a “you said, we did” framing in publicising responses to issues raised in the National Student Survey.

Alas, when it comes to the Office for Students’ own consultation on changes to NSS, the framing is more along the lines of “you said, we did what we were going to do anyway”.

Following 250 responses over five weeks, all seven of the postulated OfS proposals will proceed as planned.

What if the real consultation was the friends we made along the way?

The whole survey moves to direct questions with a four-point scale from 2023, the summative question remains in the devolved nations but disappears in England, new questions on freedom of expression (in England only) and mental wellbeing provision will be added from 2023, the window for student responses will be shortened slightly from 2025 onwards in line with changes to other data collections. Future reviews of NSS will happen on a four-year cycle – but with other reviews added whenever OfS feels like it.

We went over the nuts and bolts of these proposals when the consultation was launched – everything we said on the substance of these plans still stands. What little value there is on anyone reading the consultation response comes from some of the Office for Students’ grimly entertaining self-justifications against similar charges.

We don’t use it, so you can’t have it

For example – around ninety per cent of respondents were against the removal of the summative question (current Q27) in England. The justification for removing it is simply that OfS do not use the question within current regulatory approaches. And that’s it. If you want to compare across nations, you’ll need to use some kind of agglomeration of the other questions.

A majority of respondents did not see the value in the freedom of expression question – we get an “issue raised by stakeholders” justification without any indication of who those stakeholders might be, or whether this question actually addressed the issues that stakeholders raised.

On this, one curiosity is that apparently some students saw freedom of expression as “essential to a sense of inclusion and belonging”. This issue didn’t come up in our recent research, but never mind. You’d think a specific question on inclusion and belonging may be of more use – but the current question 21 (“I feel part of a community of staff and students”) is being removed, with the justification that apparently some students didn’t understand it well enough and it wasn’t really about belonging and inclusion anyway.

I could go on with these examples, but to be honest the whole exercise is fundamentally depressing, and one that seems to be a continuation of a pattern developing in these consultations. There is apparently another consultation on NSS to come (and one on the use of the revised questions in the new TEF) but as proposed question 24 nearly puts it:

How clear is it that feedback is acted on?

Bonus content

Here, then, are the questions from 2023 onwards.

Scale	#	question
Teaching on my course	1	How good are staff at explaining things?
Teaching on my course	2	How often do teaching staff make the subject engaging?
Teaching on my course	3	How often is the course intellectually stimulating?
Teaching on my course	4	How often does your course challenge you to achieve your best work?
Learning opportunities	5	To what extent have you had the chance to explore ideas and concepts in depth?
Learning opportunities	6	How well does your course introduce subjects and skills in a way that builds on what you have already learned?
Learning opportunities	7	To what extent have you had the chance to bring together information and ideas from different topics?
Learning opportunities	8	To what extent does your course have the right balance of directed and independent study?
Learning opportunities	9	How well has your course developed your knowledge and skills that you think you will need for your future?
Assessment and feedback	10	How clear were the criteria used for marking your work?
Assessment and feedback	11	How fair has the marking and assessment been on your course?
Assessment and feedback	12	How well have assessments allowed you to demonstrate what you have learned?
Assessment and feedback	13	How often have you received assessment feedback on time?
Assessment and feedback	14	How often does feedback help you to improve your work?
Academic support	15	How easy was it to contact teaching staff when you needed to?
Academic support	16	How well have teaching staff supported your learning?
Organisation and Management	17	How well organised is your course?
Organisation and Management	18	How well were any changes to teaching on your course communicated?
Learning resources	19	How well have the IT resources and facilities supported your learning?
Learning resources	20	How well have the library resources (e.g., books, online services and learning spaces) supported your learning?
Learning resources	21	How easy is it to access subject specific resources (e.g., equipment, facilities, software) when you need them?
Student voice	22	To what extent do you get the right opportunities to give feedback on your course?
Student voice	23	To what extent are students' opinions about the course valued by staff?
Student voice	24	How clear is it that students' feedback on the course is acted on?
Student voice	25	How well does the students' union (association or guild) represent students' academic interests?
Overall	26	(Not England) Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of the course.
Mental wellbeing services	27	How well communicated was information about your university/college's mental wellbeing support services?
Freedom of expression	28	(England only) During your studies, how free did you feel to express your ideas, opinions and beliefs?

Update: I’ve been reassured that everyone’s favourite question – the free text question – also remains in the template for the whole UK.