QAA says international student voice should shape curriculum and support
Updated Aug 14, 2026
QAA has put international student voice at the centre of new practical guidance for curriculum, support and staff development. On 3 August 2026, it announced a QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project led by De Montfort University with the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Wolverhampton. The project gives universities a framework, an audit tool and an inclusive-practice guide for treating international students as partners whose lived experience should shape decisions. For teams responsible for student voice, the practical test is whether institutions can turn that principle into evidence, ownership and visible action.
What has changed in international student voice practice
QAA's announcement follows the publication of the project outputs on 23 July 2026. The work is UK-focused and intended for academic and professional services staff, but it is guidance rather than a new regulatory requirement. Its evidence comes from four in-person workshops held between 2 December 2025 and 22 January 2026. The final report records 89 participants across the four universities and says the workshops involved both staff and students, although it does not give a separate count for each group. Researchers analysed recorded discussions, observation notes, written material and arts-based outputs using reflexive thematic analysis. Institutions should therefore read the findings as a structured four-university practice study, not a sector-wide survey.
The project produced three connected resources: a conceptual framework, a Deficit Narrative Audit Tool, and an inclusive-practice guide for staff. The framework asks teams to examine provision through four lenses: how international students are positioned, whose knowledge the curriculum centres, which assumptions educators bring, and which institutional structures constrain inclusive practice. The report identifies three recurring findings across the workshops: dedicated support can be hard to find and understand, institutions need to question where an assumed "deficit" really sits, and belonging is a precondition for effective learning. The resources turn those findings into prompts that can be used in staff development, curriculum review and institutional policy.
The report also sets out six practice principles. These ask institutions to recognise students as individuals before teaching, locate the source of a problem honestly, centre international student voices, act within local control while naming structural constraints, recognise that responsibility begins with recruitment promises, and move from a deficit model to an asset-based view of what students bring. One passage captures the shift:
"Co-creation is not a methodology. It is an ethical commitment to working with students rather than on their behalf."
The main change is practical: QAA has given universities a shared language and a set of tools for testing whether curriculum, support and staff development are informed by international students' actual experiences.
What this means for institutions
First, universities should check whether their feedback systems treat international students as one homogeneous category. Aggregate survey scores can hide differences by programme level, domicile, language background, visa status, mode of study and stage of the student journey. Open questions, focus groups and representative routes should let students describe the experience in their own terms, while reporting should avoid turning recurring structural issues into assumed student shortcomings. The takeaway is to segment evidence carefully without inventing a single international student experience.
Second, institutions need to involve international students before curriculum, support and staff-development responses are fixed. That aligns with the recent case for moving student voice upstream of consultation: lived experience is more useful when it helps define the problem, not only when students react to a finished proposal. It also connects with evidence that co-created inclusive curricula can strengthen belonging. For Student Experience teams and PVCs, the implication is to build student input into design, review and evaluation, then show which decisions it changed.
Third, responsibility cannot sit only with individual educators. The report names workload, large classes, late arrivals, limited professional development and institutional policy as conditions that shape what staff can do. Quality teams should therefore connect student evidence to named owners across curriculum, assessment, international recruitment, induction, support and staff development. A clear record of what students raised, who reviewed it, what changed and what remains constrained makes the response easier to govern and explain. The practical benefit is an evidence trail that turns listening into accountable institutional action.
How international student feedback analysis connects
Closed questions can show where international student experience differs, but open comments help teams understand whether the cause is assessment design, curriculum content, isolation, communication, workload, visa-related timing or difficulty finding support. Those comments should be compared across surveys and cohorts, then tested through dialogue with students rather than treated as a complete account on their own. This keeps qualitative evidence useful without allowing a small number of comments to stand in for every international student.
Student Voice Analytics can help institutions group recurring themes across NSS, PTES, PRES, module evaluations and local surveys using one reproducible method. The analysis should support, not replace, co-creation and professional judgement. A student comment analysis governance checklist can help teams set rules for cohort comparisons, small-group reporting, ownership and follow-up before sensitive evidence reaches a committee or action plan. The takeaway is to pair structured analysis with direct student involvement and a visible route to action.
FAQ
Q: What should institutions do now with the QAA international student voice resources?
A: Start with one existing curriculum, support or staff-development process. Use the four lenses to audit how international students are described, which evidence informs decisions, who is missing from that evidence, and who owns the response. Then involve international students in checking the diagnosis and shaping the next action.
Q: What is the timeline and scope of the project?
A: QAA published the framework, audit tool, final report and inclusive-practice resource on 23 July 2026, then announced them on 3 August. The project was led by De Montfort University with three partner universities and drew on four workshops held from December 2025 to January 2026. It offers UK higher education guidance, not a mandatory quality or regulatory change.
Q: What is the broader implication for student voice?
A: Institutions need to ask more than whether international students were consulted. They should test whether students helped define the issue, whether their different experiences remained visible in the evidence, and whether responsibility for action reached the teams able to change curriculum, support or policy. Student voice becomes credible when it changes institutional practice rather than only describing it.
References
[Quality Assurance Agency]: "QAA-funded project makes fundamental and far-reaching recommendations on approaches to international students" Published: 2026-08-03
[Quality Assurance Agency]: "Supporting staff to enhance the international student experience: Final report" Published: 2026-07-23
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