Skip to navigation | Skip to main content | Skip to footer
Menu
Search the Staffnet siteSearch StaffNet

Faculty of Humanities

NSS 2024 – Faculty of Humanities overview

12 Jul 2024

A message from Professor Fiona Devine and Professor Fiona Smyth

Dear All

On Wednesday the Office for Students (OfS) released the National Student Survey (NSS) results for 2024. Please take a few moments to read the University StaffNet article on the results, which includes an overview on a number of University-wide areas of success and those where we need to improve, and a comment from Professor April McMahon, Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students.

72.5% of final-year undergraduates across the University completed the survey, in line with the average for English universities. Our Faculty response rate was 71.7%, which is a slight drop on 2023 (72.4%), although more Humanities students completed the NSS than last year. Thank you to our academic and professional services colleagues for all the hard work you put in to promote the survey and encourage as many finalists as possible to take part.

For each response submitted the University made a £2 donation split equally between four good causes – the University of Manchester Cost of Living Support Fund, Lifeshare, St Ann’s Hospice and Refugee Women Connect. We are really pleased that survey completions by Humanities students have resulted in £6,048 being committed to support the work of these organisations, an increase of more than £500 on 2023.

2024 is the second year that the NSS has used the same questions and the ‘positivity score’ (the percentage of respondents who chose a positive option when answering the questions) to calculate the results. This means that we can compare this year’s outcomes with 2023.

We can now give you some Faculty and School headlines from the huge amount of data provided by the NSS.

Our overall positivity score for the Faculty is 76.4% (an increase of 0.5%). We are also pleased that three of our four Schools have improved their total positivity score. SEED’s positivity score has risen by 2.1% to 82.9%; AMBS’s score has increased 0.7% to 78.1%; and SALC’s score has improved by 1.4% to 76.2%. SoSS’s score of 74.3% is a slight fall of 0.5% compared to 2023.

24 of the 27 of the questions were grouped under seven themes:

  • teaching on my course;
  • learning opportunities;
  • assessment and feedback;
  • academic support;
  • organisation and management;
  • learning resources; and
  • student voice.

In addition, there were questions on Students’ Union representation, information about the University’s mental wellbeing services, and freedom of expression.

Focusing on the seven core themes, there are some encouraging results.

At a Faculty level, our students were most positive about academic support, an 84.3% score representing a 1.7% increase on last year. Teaching on my course also scored well with 83.9%, up 1%. Learning resources were also highly valued, receiving 81.2%, although this was a 0.4% fall on 2023.

Looking at School results for the seven themes, academic support scored very well across the board – 87.3% for SEED, 87.1% for SALC, 83.2% for AMBS and 82.3% for SoSS.

In terms of learning resources, SEED scored 87.6%, AMBS 85.3%, SoSS 79.9% and SALC 78.3%. For teaching on my course, SALC scored 87.7%, SEED 86.1%, SoSS 82.5% and AMBS 79.7%. These are all good outcomes.

Of the Schools’ 28 positivity scores across the themes, 15 were above 80% and 20 were above 75%. This is a promising basis to work from as we plan further improvements to student experience in the Faculty.

There are two themes throughout the Faculty where we have performed less well. While our student voice score increased by 2.1% compared to 2023, the 66.6% result needs to be improved. Assessment and feedback also continues to be an area of concern, with a positivity score of 67.8%, a 1.8% fall from last year.

Either assessment and feedback or student voice were the lowest-scoring themes in each of our Schools, so these are specific areas where we need to concentrate our improvement efforts. Assessment and feedback positivity scores were: SEED 77.8%, SALC 70.4%, AMBS 67.1% and SoSS 63.9%. For student voice, the scores were: SEED 78.2%, AMBS 72.0%, SoSS 64.3% and SALC 62.8%.

We have some good results to consider over the next few weeks and months, along with some which point to the need for improvement. In addition, the ‘open comments’ section of the NSS provide a significant amount of qualitative feedback to supplement the quantitative positivity scores from the questions. We will share detailed analysis with the relevant teams so we can continue to work on improving the experience of our students in our Schools and Faculty.

The NSS is a vital tool in helping us understand where we are working well and where we need to enhance student experience. We all have a part to play in making sure that our students have the highest level of teaching and learning possible.

Thank you again to everyone who works so hard to support our students. We are lucky to have such dedicated academic and professional services colleagues across the Faculty. We are looking forward to working together to give all our students an excellent experience during their time at the University, and towards improving our NSS scores for 2025.

Regards Fiona and Fiona

Professor Fiona Devine CBE FAcSS FRSA, Vice-President and Dean

Professor Fiona Smyth, Deputy Dean and Vice-Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students