The publication of the NSS results is causing some annoyance this year.  The survey team is not making them available on the schedule origianlly published, and data on inter-institution comparisons has been running particularly late. In addition certain findings have been released to the press prior to universities themselves having access to the data - which puts us all in a difficult position if we are asked to provide comments.

However, we do now know that Sheffield contineus to perform well overall within the Russell Group.  Last year our overall satisfaction score put us third in the group after Cambridge and Glasgow.  In 2009 Oxford students did not apparently know how to fill in the survey, so Oxford did not appear in the institutional tables because its response rate was too low.  This year Oxford students have done better and that university now appears in the tables - where it takes top place for overall satisfaction within the Russell Group.  That pushes us into 4th place, with Cambridge and Glasgow still in front of us: but Warwick has now moved into a joint position with us. Our overall satisfaction score stays at 89%: I have suggested a target to Unviersity Council of 90% for the future.

There has been a lot of recent discussion about assessment and feedback scores, and we (along with other Russell Group universities) still lie in the lower half of the table on that particular set of indicators.  Sheffield's overall score on assessment and feedback has risen by only 1%.  To some that may mean that the debate during session 2009-10 (most notably in Senate) has not been accompanied by any improvement.

But if we compare scores for 2009 with those for 2010 there are some very interesting changes.  In the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health, where there has been a concerted attempt to improve feedback to students, every department has seen an improvement in their score - by 14% in the case of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Science.  In Physical Geography (in the Faculty of Social Sciences) the level of satisfaction with assessment and feedback rose by 16% in one year following the introduction of new procedures to allow students to see their marked examination scripts - procedures which have brought little extra burden to acacdemic staff but which have clearly been strongly welcomed by students. Law, with one of the highest staff-student ratios in the university, has similarly seen a 6% rise in student satisfaction with assessment and feedback.  In the Faculty of Engineering four of the six departments for which we have comparative data recorded an increase in student satisfaction with assessment and feedback - in one case (Mechanical Engineering) by 10%.

So, there are these good news stories around the university - and yet our institutional score for assessment and feedback has scarcely shifted.  I will spare departmental names where there have been steep falls in results, but at Faculty level the improvement in half the departments in Social Sciences is matched by declines in the other half.  Whilst some Arts and Humanities departments have seen significant improvements (for instance, Germanic Studies with a 17% rise) others have seen a decline.  But it is in the Faculty of Science where there has been almost universal decline in student satisfaction with assessment and feedback.

University results are dependent on performance in individual departments.  We have seen this is previous years: in 2008 Sheffield would have been 4 places higher in the national (not the Russell Group) league table were it not for the performance of two large departments that brought us down.  A task for me and the Faculties over the next year will be to try to spread the improvement in assessment and feedback practices that is now apparent in some areas of the university so that it covers the whole institution.