Student survey
Tell us your views and opinions to help improve our courses and your time studying with us
We run an annual survey to gather the views and opinions of all students studying at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust – this is your chance to tell us what you think.
The Trust has been running an annual student survey since 2004. To enable benchmarking, the questions are largely based on the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) and the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES), both run nationally by Advance HE (formerly Higher Education Academy). To capture the unique nature of the Trust’s programmes and their integral link to NHS clinical training, and to help us in our aspirations for promoting Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, additional questions are included.
The survey is a key component of the Trust’s engagement with students, alongside more frequent touch points such as termly course committee meetings, student representation on DET committees, termly Dean’s Forum meetings, and more ad hoc events and surveys.
Anonymity and Privacy Statement
We want you to feel comfortable expressing your opinions and so we protect your identity within the survey through our privacy statement.
Here is a summary:
- Your name, email address, student ID and any other personal information will NOT be saved with your response.
- Please do not identify yourselves or others in any written (Qualitative) comments
- We will NOT share the section ‘about yourself’ (where you are asked about your personal characteristics) with course teams.
- Aggregate (combined results with your peers) are presented in graph and table form, never individual responses (see the full report for examples of how the data is presented).
- All feedback is considered and reported on at a global level, but where there are fewer than five responses at a course level, these results will not be shared with course teams.
- Qualitative comments may be used for marketing purposes.
Your participation in this survey is voluntary and you can stop at any point and delete your answers. Once you have completed the questionnaire you will not be able to return to the survey to amend or delete your answers.
What are the questions?
We ask questions in the following areas:
- Course Details (to enable course teams to review the satisfaction on their course and benchmark against different courses)
- Learning and Teaching
- Engagement
- Assessment and Feedback
- Support and Wellbeing
- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
- Masters Dissertation or Major Project (only final year MA students are asked these questions)
- Organisation and Management
- Skills Development
- Resources (Library and Moodle)
- Professional Doctorates (only students on Professional Doctorates are asked these questions)
- Overall Satisfaction
- Covid-19
- About Yourself
The answers to the ‘About Yourself’ questions are used to analyse our performance by characteristic, and evaluate whether certain groups are experiencing our delivery differently, e.g. if some students with particular characteristics are less satisfied with an aspect, such as support and wellbeing, than others. We never share the data for this section at a course level.
You said, we did…
In last year’s survey, you asked for more opportunities to discuss your work with your peers.
During the academic year, we have created more face-to-face student spaces. This includes a new student common room on the ground floor, with available locker spaces and study areas for students.
You requested more provision for student wellbeing and support.
As a result of your feedback, we now have a dedicated Student Support and Engagement team, including a dedicated Student Disability Officer. They will be working closely with students and others on a range of student support, engagement and wellbeing activities and services.
You told us more help is needed when seeking a placement.
As part of the new structure, we now have a designated Placements Officer to support students throughout the placement process. The Placements Officer will be working closely with course teams to provide further transparency and clarity for students undertaking placements.
Areas of good practice
In addition to areas that we need to work on, it is also important to keep in mind the areas where you tell us we do well – so that we can learn from this and continue developing in these areas too.
You consistently tell us that we do well in the following areas:
- Learning and Teaching
- The Tavistock library
- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
Prize Draw Terms & Conditions
This year, we are offering all students who complete our annual survey the opportunity to enter a prize draw to win one of three £25 National Book Token vouchers.
Prize: One of three £25 National Book Token vouchers.
To Enter: Upon completion of the student survey, you will be given a link to enter your details into the prize draw. The prize draw will close at midnight on Friday 30 June 2023.
Eligibility:
- Only students who are enrolled on a course leading to either a Tavistock Certificate or a nationally accredited award (e.g. MA, PgDip, PgCert) can participate in the survey
- Only students who have completed all the compulsory questions on the survey can enter the prize draw
- One prize per entrant
Overview report and action plan
We take your feedback extremely seriously and create analysis reports and comprehensive, wide-ranging action plans based on the results.
Your feedback is also included in the annual review of our courses which all course teams review and respond to with a course-level action plan. These are then considered and discussed at course committees.