NSS promotion in 2026: neutral messaging and restricted response-rate sharing

Updated Sep 07, 2026

NSS promotion should encourage participation while leaving students free to give their own views. The OfS guidance prohibits coaching answers, making completion compulsory and embedding NSS within another survey. Inappropriate influence can lead to suppression of affected course results for that year. OfS promotion guidance.

The page’s 2 February 2026 update corrected a reference from HEFCW to Medr in the Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland guide. It was not an announcement of a new blanket promotion policy. The 2026 guides were originally published on 22 October 2025. Official update history.

Interim response rates: what is permitted

The England guide permits limited, documented sharing of interim response rates for the specified operational or quality-assurance purposes, including with relevant staff, student representatives and eligible students. It does not impose a blanket ban on sharing rates with students.

It prohibits sharing rates on open social media or with outside organisations, and restricts access to relevant recipients. When rates are used to encourage participation, the dissemination must be recorded in a Project Communication Plan, covering the audience, information, channel, timing and purpose. Read the conditions together before applying them. England guide, paragraphs 54–64, pages 15–17.

For 2026, promotion was optional for providers in England; the guide distinguishes the promotion requirement in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It also described a shorter main survey period, from mid-February to the end of April, as anticipated from 2027–28, rather than the timetable for NSS 2026. England guide, paragraphs 5 and 27–29.

A practical communications review

Our recommendation is to check each local message against the appropriate national guide. Keep question interpretation with the student, explain that participation is voluntary, and make completion private. Review response-rate communications separately from the wording used to request feedback.

For other surveys, distinguish the explicit prohibition on embedding NSS from your own scheduling choices. Avoid describing every overlapping institutional survey as prohibited unless the applicable guidance supports that conclusion. Once data is collected, the comment governance checklist addresses the separate question of how to handle qualitative evidence.

Correction, 7 September 2026: removed the incorrect blanket ban on sharing interim response rates, clarified the limited February document correction, and removed an unsupported general ban on running similar surveys alongside NSS. Updated the source link to the current official guide.