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Sussex demonstrates sustained improvement in all National Student Survey themes
Posted on behalf of: Internal Communications
Last updated: Thursday, 9 July 2026
The University has shown sustained positive improvement in all categories of this year’s National Student Survey (NSS), with increased positivity scores in all seven themed categories, and in all but one of the questions.
After achieving our highest ever response rate of 80%, Sussex’s NSS results show continuous improvement over four years, both in absolute terms, and in terms of our benchmark positions.
The results, published yesterday are based on feedback from final year undergraduate students, and show that our strategic focus on student voice and assessment and feedback has been paying dividends in improving our students’ experience at Sussex.
Some highlights include:
- 8th nationally for the question ‘how well organised is your course?’
- improvement of 4.6% in the Student Voice theme to 80% andup 31 places in the national ranking, supported by our new approach to module evaluations
- improvement of 2.4% in the Assessment and Feedback theme to 79.5%
- a score of 95% for ‘how good are teaching staff at explaining things’
- 93% of students say library resources have helped support their learning
- positivity scores of over 90% on individual questions have been achieved for several subjectsin each Faculty, and the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities saw some impressive increases in several subjects.
Sector comparison is against the 131 providers ranked in the 2026 domestic institutional league tables.
The University of Sussex Students’ Union also scored well again this year and improved on last year, rising by 10 places to 35th nationally. Student unions make an essential contribution to the overall student experience and the student voice, and we work closely with our Students’ Union on all aspects of student life.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Sasha Roseneil said: “I am very pleased see the continued improvement in our 2026 NSS results, for four years now. The success of our commitment to improving your experience at Sussex, and particularly our focus on ensuring our students are assessed and fed back to promptly and consistently, and on listening to and acting on your feedback to us, is demonstrated clearly in this year’s results.
“The response rate this year of 80% was our highest ever and I am very grateful to each and every finalist who took the time to complete the survey – this feedback really does make a difference. With such a high response rate, we can be confident that students' views are truly reflected in these results and we can use them to identify further opportunities for improvement."
The NSS is organised annually by the Office for Students (OfS) and gathers final year undergraduate students’ opinions on their experience of their course and the support provided by their higher education institution.
Improved results in the NSS help to make Sussex a more compelling choice for staff and students, and the results inform league tables and university guides.