OfS pilot survey for taught postgraduates launches at UCL

UCL is one of over 60 higher education institutions taking part in the Office for Students’ pilot survey for postgraduate students on taught programmes.

The survey runs until Friday 16 August, and eligible students will receive an email inviting them to complete the online questionnaire on Friday 14 June.

The survey, on a dedicated website, takes around 10 minutes to complete.

The survey gives postgraduate taught students the opportunity to provide confidential feedback on their experience, including teaching, academic support, assessment, wellbeing and value for money.

Who are the Office for Students?

The Office for Students (OfS) is an independent body with the mission of ensuring a high-quality experience of higher education for all students. The OfS is piloting the survey to build a broad understanding of what it is like to be a taught postgraduate student at an English university.

The OfS’ survey for taught postgraduates is unrelated to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), which is an undergraduate-only exercise. There are no plans for the TEF to be extended to postgraduate teaching.

Why is UCL taking part in the survey?  

UCL has chosen to join around 60 other universities in promoting the pilot survey as the anonymised feedback we receive from the survey can help us identify areas of the postgraduate experience we can improve, as well as highlighting what already works well.

Feedback from student surveys has already inspired a number of positive changes across UCL, as you can see on the You Shaped UCL page.

Taking part in the pilot survey also gives UCL the opportunity to influence and shape the development of future OfS surveys for taught postgraduates.

Why should students take part?

As well as providing vital feedback to help UCL continue to improve, UCL students’ survey responses will help the OfS build a nationwide picture of postgraduate study.

Students’ responses to the pilot survey will also help the OfS develop future methods for collecting postgraduate students’ feedback.

All responses to the survey are strictly confidential, and no individual students will be identifiable in the results data.

Is this the same as the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES)? 

The OfS' pilot survey is separate to the PTES, which is organised by Advance HE. UCL has opted to participate in the pilot survey after the PTES close date (7 June), meaning the pilot survey will run at UCL from 14 June until 16 August. 

Running two PGT surveys, especially so close to one another, is not ideal but we depend on PTES for programme-level insights, which the pilot survey will not provide.