The annual National Student Survey is now in its final two weeks. The survey is open to all final year undergraduate students and takes only five minutes to complete. It is a valuable opportunity for our students to provide us with feedback on the quality of teaching, assessment and support at SOAS.

Please help us to ensure that the largest number of students possible complete the survey by reminding final students in lectures and seminars, workshops and events of the importance to the School of their feedback. More and more the survey is important in helping future students to choose their Universities and degrees to study.

Last year's survey results saw our overall satisfaction increase by 4%. 88% of final year SOAS students said they were satisfied with the overall quality of their course, the highest level of satisfaction achieved since the survey began, and 4% above the sector average.

Departments that show the highest levels of overall satisfaction among final year SOAS students were Anthropology (96%), DeFiMS (95%) Development Studies(93%), and Linguistics (92%). For overall ranking in the UK, Africa and Near and Middle East were ranked first, DeFiMS third, Anthropology fourth, Asian Studies fourth and Development Studies fourth.

Satisfaction with teaching received the best results, beating the sector average by 2% with a student satisfaction rate of 89%. Highest satisfaction for teaching was recorded in the Department of Finance and Management Studies(96%), Anthropology (95%), Art and Archaeology (94%), Law (91%), Development Studies (91%), History (91%) and Linguistics (90%).

Excellent results were also achieved for how well students think teaching is organised and managed. Satisfaction rates in this area increased by 7% to 78%. Satisfaction with access to learning resources showed similar improvements with a rise by 8% to 84%, following a multi-million pound refurbishment of the Library. 88% of our students said they were satisfied with access to both library and IT resources. Student satisfaction relating to two key areas of assessment and feedback and academic support, showed significant improvements, with increases of 7% and 13% respectively.

Your help to ensure we build on the successes of last year is greatly appreciated.There is a link to the survey on the BLE, SOAS website and SOAS desktops in the computer labs or you can send your students the link - http://www.thestudentsurvey.com/

If you have any questions please get in touch with Dr Mandy Bentham, Director of Academic Development, mb68@soas.ac.uk or ext 4511 or Heidi Ward, Learning Development Manager, hw21@soas.ac.uk or x4553.