Chemistry & Materials Departments display year on year NSS participation increase

The Chemistry and Materials Departments have shown a marked improvement from the number of final year students who have completed the National Student Survey. At the time of writing, Chemistry had achieved 93.54% participation, 23.9% higher that last year’s final figure. In comparison the department of Materials has seen a smaller gain of 4.46% over last year’s 78.87% figure.

The Department of Earth Science and Engineering (ESE) remains at the top of the leaderboard with another year of full participation from finalists.

On the other hand Biology currently needs over 69% of students to fill out the NSS in order to reach last year’s 80.61% high.

There was some controversy at the start of the session when some students were temporarily unable to fill out the survey because the government had not processed changes to their degree length.

Additionally, some students (including those on year abroad schemes) have been forced to fill out the NSS a year early since Ipsos MORI has been unable to remove them from the survey.

Nat Kempston, the Union’s Deputy President (Education) told Felix: “NSS participation is going really well so far, I am pleased with the progress in the majority of departments. Life Sciences are not promoting the survey until March when they have finished their Final exams so this accounts for their low participation rates. Therefore it is Mech Eng, Maths and Physics that are the departments we need to focus on. This year we have put the graph on Blackboard so students can view participation rates easily, as well as keeping other publicity methods from previous years.

The Faculty of Natural Sciences are offering £5 for every student who fills in the NSS, which goes to their Dep Soc or towards an end of year party (Maths), and many other departments are offering rewards for participation (Bioengineering are giving out t-shirts!). We will see where departments end up on April 30!”

The National Student Survey, commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, started in late January and is set to close on April 30, final years can access the survey at: www.thestudentsurvey.com