The results of the National Student Survey (NSS) have been published this week. The NSS is an annual survey of all final-year undergraduate students at UK Higher Education Institutions. It focuses primarily on students' academic experiences, including a specific question about Students' Unions: "How well does the students' union (association or guild) represent students' academic interests?"
We’re delighted to report another increase in our score for this question, with 78.1% of students rating The SU 'Very well' or 'Well'. This is above the sector average and reflects the significant work we’ve done in this area over the past year.
Some of our key highlights related to academic representation this year include:
- SUmmit passed 5 Standpoints related to the academic experience including,
- The University must continue to constantly seek student feedback on engagement monitoring and data collection.
- The University should prioritise student welfare and academic equity with a standardised response to late submission of assessment
- The SU believes that the University should amend its IMC and extension policies and processes and standardise these across departments in accordance with its EDI Commitments.
- The SU believes that lecture recordings should be mandatory for all taught content and must meet a consistent and accessible standard, ensuring they are clear, promptly available, and retained throughout the course duration.
- The SU believes that there should be adequate sensory friendly workspaces available.
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Officers championed student academic interests through the Top Ten priorities, especially around inclusive teaching and assessment, academic rights, and support.
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Supported students affected by exam errors, ensuring issues were addressed and resolved through cohort representatives. We will continue to advocate for improved invigilator training.
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Individual support through our Advice and Support Service, helping students with academic appeals, mitigating circumstances, complaints, and academic misconduct cases.
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National representation: SU President Jiji was selected as Chair of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education’s Student Strategic Advisory Committee.
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University-wide influence: Officers and student reps sat on numerous University committees and working groups, including the highest academic body, Senate. We also have over 350 undergraduate academic reps who work with the Education Officer to represent students academic interests at a course and departmental level.
SU President Benji says “I am delighted to see the NSS scores continue to reflect all the positive work we are doing to represent our members academic interests. There is so much more that hasn’t been listed that we do day in day out and we are looking at ways to share some of these successes more widely over the next year”.
As well as The SU, The University has seen many scores improve this year and seen many areas where they have outperformed their sector benchmarks. View the University announcement.
Benji continued “It's amazing to see that the University continues to have many positive and increased scores this year. As we look to next year and how we can continue to represent students' academic interests to the University, through the Top Ten and other channels, we will use the survey data to identify areas for further improvement. We already know there needs to be a particular focus on improving student opinion on assessment feedback and workloads as this seems to be an increasing concern for students at Bath.”
To find out more about our representative structures visit our voice pages on our website.