QAA enhancement funding: an opportunity to test student feedback practice

Updated Sep 11, 2026

QAA enhancement funding is open for collaborative projects, following the agency's 14 August 2026 announcement. The call explicitly includes support for student collaboration. For university quality and Student Experience teams, it offers a funding route to explore when planning work on how student feedback informs decisions.

What the QAA enhancement funding call offers

UK QAA members can apply for £3,000 to £15,000. QAA plans to fund five UK-led projects, each aligned with a different membership theme for 2026/27. These cover curriculum redesign, oversight of partnerships, responses to policy and regulatory developments, assessment, and quality processes. The announcement also provides for up to two additional projects jointly funded with Medr to support collaboration in Wales.

QAA's scheme page describes projects that test approaches and produce resources useful beyond the participating institutions. It sets the UK application deadline at 5pm on 2 November 2026. The funding round concerns QAA members across the UK; it is not an England-only regulatory requirement.

The announcement directs members to the application form and guidance on QAA's Membership Resources site. Teams should check that guidance before committing to a proposal or budget. A feedback project would need to fit the call's themes and terms; the public announcement does not guarantee funding for a particular survey or analysis method.

What this means for institutions

Our suggestion is to start with an unresolved question in the feedback cycle. A team might investigate whether students understand what happened after a module evaluation, or whether representatives can use survey findings in course review. These are possible project questions, not priorities prescribed by QAA. The aim should be to test a defined process and share something other institutions can use.

Bring students into the discussion before settling the preferred solution. Agree what they can influence, how their contribution will be supported, and how students outside the project group can contribute. Our coverage of student representation and feedback systems offers relevant background for mapping those routes. Include a way to record disagreement, rather than requiring a single shared account of the problem.

Plan the evaluation alongside the activity. For a project about communicating responses to feedback, that could mean asking students to locate and explain a published response, then repeating the task after changes. Record recruitment, timing and context so that the comparison can be interpreted. Producing a toolkit or holding a workshop establishes that an activity happened; judging its value requires evidence of how people used it.

How student feedback analysis connects

Open-text comments could help a project team identify questions to investigate and examine experiences after a change. Keep each source's questionnaire, population and collection period visible. Agree categories with student partners, check ambiguous comments together and retain views that challenge the main interpretation. Treat these as proposed working methods, not findings about what this funding round will achieve.

Our student comment analysis governance checklist covers category definitions, quality checks, coverage and traceability. Use it to decide what evidence can support a claim before writing the final report. Themes in submitted comments can inform further enquiry, but they cannot establish what non-participants experienced.

FAQ

Q: What should institutions do now?

A: Check QAA membership and the UK application guidance, then discuss a focused question with potential institutional partners and students. Define the proposed output, who could use it and how its usefulness would be assessed before building the budget.

Q: What is the deadline and geographical scope?

A: UK provider applications close at 5pm on 2 November 2026. QAA gives non-UK providers a separate deadline of 5pm GMT on 1 March 2027. These are application deadlines, not dates when a new survey or quality requirement takes effect.

Q: Does the call require a new student survey?

A: The public call does not prescribe one. Our recommendation is to review existing evidence with students first and collect further feedback where it answers a clear question. Explain how the evidence influenced the project's decisions, including suggestions that were not taken forward.

References

[Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education]: "Collaborative Enhancement Project funding is now open" Published: 2026-08-14

[Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education]: "Collaborative Enhancement Projects" Publication date not stated; current funding information checked: 2026-09-11