Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of suspending the national students survey due to varied effects of the covid-19 outbreak.

The National Student Survey (NSS) is managed by the Office for Students (OfS), the independent regulator of higher education in England, on behalf of the UK funding and regulatory bodies.

The fieldwork for this year’s NSS took place from 6 January to 30 April 2020. The survey is largely online so the collection of data has not been significantly affected. The OfS has not placed any expectation on higher education providers to publicise the survey during the time of the pandemic. The OfS will take a view in due course on how this year’s NSS will be used having considered the impacts of Covid-19 on the results.