Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey
The national Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) is coordinated by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and has been running since 2009.
PTES is available to all higher education institutions across the UK with postgraduate taught (PGT) student provision. Currently around 90 HEIs participate in the survey.
PTES helps institutions enhance the quality of the PGT experience by collecting feedback from current PGT students in a systematic and user-friendly way. It is based on the same methodology as the highly successful Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) and was developed using feedback from institutions who had taken part in PRES.
Find out more about PTES from the HEA
Scope of the survey
The primary aim of the survey is to measure the overall experience of studying at the postgraduate taught level. Areas for questioning have been designed to explore:
- quality of teaching and learning, assessment and feedback
- dissertation or major project
- organisation and management
- learning resources
- skills and personal development
- career and professional development
- and overall satisfaction.
In addition, this year the University of Bath will ask additional questions on each of the following topics:
- academic transition
- assessment and feedback
- student voice
- student engagement
- personal tutorial system
- Students' Union
The PTES timetable
The schedule for this year is:
- start date: Tuesday 5 March
- close date: Monday 17 June
Maximising response rates
Weekly response rate figures are provided that enable us to target our marketing and promotional activities to specific departments and programmes to ensure they reach the thresholds for publication.
To help you keep up-to-date with the response rates from students in your Department, we regularly provided updates on progress.
Check your PTES response rates
Encouraging student participation
In order to collect the most accurate data possible we want to encourage a high number of responses from our students.
One of the ways we achieve this response rate is by developing an environment of open and honest feedback and by highlighting the PTES campaign with students.
We promote the PTES to our students through a variety of institutional events and promotions. If you would like to further raise the profile of the PTES with students in your Department, we have made a range of marketing materials available.
Feeding back to students
Responding to student feedback is an effective way of encouraging participation in future surveys. It is expected that results of the PTES will be fed back to the student body by departments and their Staff Student Liaison Committee so that students can see that the University has been responsive to their feedback.
The Code of Practice on the Annual Monitoring of Units and Programmes (QA51) outlines how academic departments should respond to the data from PTES.
Read the QA51 statement on the Annual Monitoring of Units and Programmes
Survey methodology
PTES uses the same method as the Careers in Research Online Survey (CROS), which has been used successfully by HEIs across the UK in recent years for collecting feedback from research staff, and the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) for collecting feedback from research students. Both surveys are based on online questionnaires that are delivered via the Bristol Online Surveys (BOS) website.
A PTES Steering Group was established by the HEA in 2007 and pilot of the survey was run in 2007/08 with 7 HEIs. 2,238 students volunteered to take the survey, with a response rate of 13%. PTES 2012 saw a total of 54,640 students from 83 higher education institutions in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland taking part in the survey, with an overall response rate of 24.7%.
Appropriate questions from NSS and PRES are also included in PTES, to allow comparisons of students’ views of their experiences through the ladder of higher education qualifications.
