The Students’ Union at Bournemouth University (SUBU) has climbed 13 places in this year’s National Student Survey (NSS), achieving its highest score in four years.
Run annually by Ipsos on behalf of the Office for Students (OfS), the NSS gathers feedback from final-year undergraduate students at UK universities, assessing their overall satisfaction and experiences within their courses. The results play a key role in shaping university league tables.
This year, SUBU received a positivity score of 76.2% on the NSS’ student union question focused on representing students’ academic interests - a significant rise of 3.9 percentage points from last year’s score.
SUBU now sits 19 points above the competitor set average, and has climbed 13 places in the national rankings, moving from 80th to 67th place.
While the national average for UK students’ unions rose by 2.8 points, SUBU’s improvement exceeds this, showing progress even more progress than national trends.
Bournemouth University (BU) also performed strongly across the NSS, with positivity scores improved in all seven themes and across 25 of the 27 individual questions. The results show that BU’s gap to the sector has narrowed in three of the seven themes: teaching on my course, learning opportunities and organisation and management.
BU received a satisfaction score of 76% for providing students with the right opportunity to give feedback on their course. This result highlights the essential work of SUBU’s network of over 600 Student Reps, who gather and share student feedback to help improve teaching, assessment and course experience across BU.
Esther Isaiah, SUBU President, said: “We are incredibly proud of this years’ NSS results. They are a clear demonstration of the positive work and impact the Union has had representing students across the university. This progress reflects the dedication of our student reps, officers, and staff in ensuring that student voices shape real academic change.
“By working closely with our student representatives and championing student voice, I am looking forward to continuing this hard work into the new academic year.”
The NSS 2025 results are available to view on the OfS website.