Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES)

The Questionnaire

PTES asked questions around seven core themes (section); "Teaching and learning", "Engagement", "Assessment and feedback", "Dissertation or major project", "Organisation and management", "Resources and services", "Skills development". York chose not to include any questions of its own. The survey also included personal and demographic questions.

The survey was designed by the Higher Education Academy, https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ which now forms part of Advance HE. The survey is administered by individual institutions which chose to take part. The results of the survey remain confidential to each institution; the HEA does, however, provide us with data that allow us to compare our results against the average for all participating HEIs and participating institutions from the Russell Group.

Please note that Advance HE regularly revises the question set (including phrasing). Consequently, there tends to be a difference between the question set from year to year. For example, the Ethnic Group classification used in PTES 2016 was different to the one used in PTES 2014. Consequently, a direct comparison is not readily feasible.

The HEA has provided guidance on external use of the PTES results, https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/advance-he-student-surveys-code-practice Please note that the Code was revised in December 2017 and introduced a number of changes. Institutions may decide to publish their results externally, including quartile position and ranking, and may compare with benchmarking group averages or quartiles. Reference may only be made to the national (sector-wide) results once published by the HEA in the Autumn 2018. The use of the results should only be for the purpose of assisting people to develop informed judgements, opinions and choices. If you wish to obtain further advice on how the results can be used in promotional materials, please contact the Academic Support Office in the first instance (aso@york.ac.uk).