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Photo: University of Aberdeen
The annual National Student Survey results for 2026 are published today. The nation-wide exercise captures final year undergraduate’s opinions about their experiences at university, including how their course was organised, taught and assessed.
Over 360,000 students responded to the survey with around 24,000 of these responses coming from students at a Scottish university.
Students in Scotland are asked to condense their judgement in a question that asks about their overall satisfaction. This year saw an increase in overall satisfaction of 1.7 percentage points to 82.4%, continuing an upward trend that began in 2024. Despite this, the level of satisfaction continues to fall short of the 85% result recorded in 2020, the last survey to be unaffected by the impact on students of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since the introduction of the new question set in 2023, the question: “How good are teaching staff at explaining things?” has produced the best response from students at Scottish universities. This year is no different, with a 93.3 percentage point positive response. At the opposite end of the spectrum, respondents were least likely to agree that it was clear to them that students’ feedback on their course had been acted upon.
More generally across all the survey’s questions, the 2026 scores were more positive than the previous year’s results. A notable finding amongst individual universities is that the University of Dundee’s overall satisfaction rating increased by 1.3 percentage points despite the effects of the institution’s financial difficulties.
Richard Maconachie, Director of Institutional Performance at the Scottish Funding Council, said:
“The continuation of the upward trend in overall satisfaction is especially encouraging at a time when universities are faced with a challenging financial environment. The overall satisfaction rating at the University of Dundee is a credit to its staff and its students and shows resilience in difficult circumstances.
“Across the sector we are seeing the positive impact of a partnership effort to focus on student needs and the quality of learning and teaching.”
Further information about the National Student Survey 2026 is available from the Office for Students website
