ÃÛÌÒAV

We sometimes ask for your feedback on matters relating to your student experience at ÃÛÌÒAV, including both academic experiences and other matters such as the impact of receiving student bursaries or your wider experience of student life at ÃÛÌÒAV. These may be sent to you while you are still at ÃÛÌÒAV or after you leave ÃÛÌÒAV. You are not required to participate in these surveys. We use your feedback on our courses and your study experience at ÃÛÌÒAV to comply with our policies on programme monitoring and evaluation in order to maintain and improve the quality of our courses and teaching activities and take decisions as to the nature and content of the programmes we will provide to students in the future. Where relevant, your feedback is also used for other organisational development purposes e.g. to consider future approaches to providing financial and other support for students and determine how to communicate with applicants/potential applicants and students in the future.

To obtain student feedback we may ask you to complete ÃÛÌÒAV forms or surveys, provide oral or written comments to student representatives or act as a student representative for your course. We may use online survey tools such as Survey Monkey for this purpose. You may also be invited to complete surveys delivered by external organisations, such as the National Student Survey (NSS), the Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS), the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) and the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES).

In connection with our core teaching, learning and support services we use student views and evaluations to help us maintain, develop and improve the quality of our courses, our teaching and supervision activities and related policies. In some cases ÃÛÌÒAV has a regulatory requirement to carry out surveys or evaluations itself or support the conduct of surveys by third parties. In particular:

• We will ask you to provide internal feedback on or evaluations of your study experience at ÃÛÌÒAV, including specific courses or modules you are undertaking. When submitted in writing as a response to a survey, this information will be provided on an unnamed basis unless you choose to provide your name. All personal data will be anonymised in internal and external reporting of results. We may ask you to provide this information using an online survey tool such as Survey Monkey: if this is the case, the survey tool provider will also provide you with a privacy notice about their processing of data. If you provide feedback orally or informally, e.g. to a student representative or by email to an individual academic, you need to tell the recipient if you do not want your name to be linked to your feedback or you do not want your feedback to be used or shared in a particular way.
• We sometimes invite students to take part in focus group discussions about ÃÛÌÒAV policies relating to teaching and learning or student experience. We keep a record of the names of students who participate in these groups but when we record the views expressed in the group we do not link these to student names or any other identifying information.
• External evaluation surveys used by ÃÛÌÒAV for the same purposes include the National Student Survey (NSS) of undergraduate student experience and the Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS) (both carried out on behalf of HESA/the Office for Students) and the PTES and PRES surveys of postgraduate student experience, carried out by Advance HE on behalf of higher education providers. We use the results of these surveys in anonymised form. Separate privacy notices will be given to you by those carrying out the surveys if you agree to participate. For PTES and PRES, the survey is developed by Advance HE for use across the HE sector and administered by ÃÛÌÒAV in relation to its students. To run the survey we use an individual identifier linked to student name, but the identifiable information is deleted after the results are received and we do not connect the survey responses to individuals. There is a separate section below about the national surveys we are required to take part in, the National Student Survey (NSS) and the Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS).
• We use your evaluations to provide overall feedback to the ÃÛÌÒAV staff who manage and deliver a course, with a view to securing appropriate improvements to the course and its delivery.
• If your feedback has not been provided anonymously, we will sometimes ask to discuss feedback with you for the purposes of improving the relevant course or course delivery or giving you information on responses to feedback.
• Your evaluations and feedback will not affect any other decisions or actions relating to you specifically (as an identifiable individual). The only exception is if your views or the way in which you have expressed them breach a ÃÛÌÒAV policy such as the Dignity & Respect policy.
• In addition to surveys or evaluations of your course of study, we will sometimes invite you to complete surveys carried out by ÃÛÌÒAV or external organisations which relate to other aspects of your ÃÛÌÒAV experience/student life. These can include surveys on services delivered by ÃÛÌÒAV’s Residential Services, e.g. LettingsÃÛÌÒAV and ResLifeÃÛÌÒAV or surveys carried out by an external organisation, e.g. GSLi. The results of these surveys are used by ÃÛÌÒAV only for the purposes of evaluating and improving the scope and content of services and support we provide to our students. Ofsted will invite apprentices to complete a survey during a full inspection, the results of which will not be seen by ÃÛÌÒAV. External organisations will provide further privacy information about their use of survey results.

• Necessary for the performance of the contract between you and ÃÛÌÒAV

• Necessary for performance of ÃÛÌÒAV’s core public task, i.e. delivery of higher education and research

• Necessary for legitimate interests pursued by ÃÛÌÒAV, as described above.

For analysis and reporting purposes we process information about your personal characteristics and background. This data is collected during the application process and during on-line registration at the start of the year, and you can update it throughout the academic year. It includes information about your ethnicity, health/disability, your gender status, sexual orientation and your religion or equivalent beliefs. It also includes information about your qualifications on entry to ÃÛÌÒAV and about your socio-economic background, such as the socio-economic profile of your home address, whether you are a care leaver, whether you are estranged from your family and whether you are the first person in your family to attend higher education. For analysis and reporting purposes we often link this data together and to the further information about your academic performance and progression which is generated through your study at ÃÛÌÒAV and contained in your student record, and student feedback collected as described above.

The processing described in this section is carried out for the purposes of data analysis and reporting, which informs work to develop our provision of education, support and other services to students: it does not focus on you as an individual or involve taking decisions or actions relating to you specifically as an identifiable individual. The outputs from this activity are reports which refer to anonymised, statistical data from which you cannot be identified. This analysis is used:

• Internally to help us improve the quality and effectiveness of our education provision, student support arrangements and wider services for students, so we can increase our ability to meet the expectations and needs of students/potential students and future employers;
• Internally to help our Access and Participation work at ÃÛÌÒAV as required by the regulatory requirements of the Office for Students (OfS), the Education And Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) and promote equality of opportunity in accordance with the Equality Act 2010. This may include using the analysis to identify categories of students who may benefit from particular support or adjustments to current practice, plan provision of such support or adjustments and evaluate the success of such measures;
• In external reporting to the OfS and the ESFA (on our performance as a higher education provider and our compliance with regulatory conditions, including our Access and Participation Plan) and to the UK government and other government/public sector bodies.

The statistical analysis we create is carried out primarily by data analysts in our Academic Services and Planning, Risk, Intel, Management Information and Enhancement (PRIME) teams and is presented in a format which does not identify you as individuals.

Internally, reports on this statistical analysis are shared in a range of ways. This includes reporting within our governance structure, to our Board, Senate, Committees and sub-Committees. It also includes use within our Academic Quality team, Faculties and professional service teams to drive improvements within ÃÛÌÒAV.

Externally, ÃÛÌÒAV is required to make a range of reports to OfS. These include reporting on ÃÛÌÒAV’s actions for the purposes of widening participation as well as reports which enable OfS to appraise the quality and effectiveness of ÃÛÌÒAV’s teaching and research activities. ÃÛÌÒAV may also be asked to provide similar reports to the UK Government (Department for Education) and other public or government bodies or agencies.

• Necessary for performance of ÃÛÌÒAV’s core public task, i.e. delivery of higher education and research

• Necessary for the purposes of substantial public interest: this is equal opportunities monitoring

• Necessary for research or statistical purposes

As a higher education provider ÃÛÌÒAV is legally required to include your personal data in an annual data report to HESA, the Higher Education Statistics Agency and (in the case of further education and apprenticeship students) ESFA, the Education and Skills Funding Agency. Our reporting may include your name, the course you are attending at ÃÛÌÒAV and your funding arrangements, as well as detailed information about your personal characteristics including home postcode, ethnicity and any information we hold about your health conditions or disabilities, sexual orientation, religion or equivalent beliefs and care leaver status. For further information about the data provided to HESA and the way in which it is processed by HESA and other third parties, please see the for students.

We provide some of this information under the legal framework in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 or for a task in the public interest, or for legitimate interests, and always for research and statistical purposes. We do not ask for your consent to provide this information to HESA. This processing is not on the basis of consent, once you have given us the information. If you have questions or concerns about HESA’s use of your information which are not answered by the HESA privacy notice, you should contact HESA directly using the contact details provided in its privacy notice.

• Necessary for compliance with a legal obligation

• Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest

• Necessary for legitimate interests

• Necessary for research or statistical purposes

ÃÛÌÒAV is required to facilitate the conduct of two national surveys used to appraise the quality and effectiveness of higher education experiences in the UK and facilitate higher education policy-making. For this reason, we will provide your name, course details and contact information to:

The organisation which acts on behalf of the Office for Students to carry out the National Student Survey (NSS):

This is an annual survey of higher education students’ views about their course and higher education provider which is used to create published feedback about and ratings of courses and providers, and generally to drive improvements in higher education provision;

and

The organisation which acts on behalf of HESA to carry out the Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS):

This is a survey about the job/career outcomes for higher education graduates. You may be contacted about participating in this survey about fifteen months after you leave ÃÛÌÒAV.​

If you are contacted for these purposes you will be given further privacy information at that point and can choose whether you wish to participate. ÃÛÌÒAV receives your responses to the NSS only in anonymised statistical form. Responses to the GOS are received in individualised format but your data is only used for the research and statistical purposes (evaluation etc) described above and is not used to take any action or decisions in relation to you as an individual. Any information we publish about GOS responses will be in anonymised statistical form.

• Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest: the ÃÛÌÒAV's statutory duties to ensure the quality of higher education.