Recently Wonkhe published an analysis of the National Student Survey (NSS) data for 2026 and looked at what the last two decades of NSS had taught us.
There is a telling phrase from the blog that is worth repeating: “If the NSS exists to drive improvement, the groups who most needed improvement got the least of it.”
Disabled students are one of those groups with a growing gap in NSS results. Given that 20 per cent of students declare a disability, their voice has a significant impact on the overall NSS scores but the sector doesn’t seem to be listening to what we are told.
It is hard to know if this should be surprising or not. After all, long before we had the Office for Students (OfS) indicating that it was developing a statement of expectations for disabled students, we had a series of Department for Education and OfS sponsored exercises to improve the environment for disabled students.
We’ve seen the creation of the Disabled Student Commission in 2020, the establishment of an expert panel in 2023 and then the publication of an insight report last October. Each of these activities indicated the need for improvement in the disabled student experience. But rather than falling, the gap for disabled students has persisted – indeed the inability of the sector to close the gap is probably why OfS has moved to develop a statement of expectations.
Data day concerns
Before looking at the nature of the NSS experience gap, we should say that similar gaps are identified in both the Postgraduate Taught (PTES) and Postgraduate Research Experience Surveys (PRES). The latest iteration of PRES tells us again that disabled students are less satisfied than other students.
So what does the 2026 NSS data show?
There are some very clear patterns. The data identifies large differences for all disabled students in certain categories. And these have been persistent over time. Most tellingly disabled students report being significantly less satisfied with organisation and management – 75.5 per cent of disabled students were satisfied versus 82.4 per cent from respondents with no disability reported.
And on student voice, 76.3 per cent disability reported satisfaction versus 81.0 per cent of respondents with no disability reported. Let’s take each of these in turn.
The results for organisation and management tell us several really important things about failings in the disabled student experience that have been echoed in a range of specialist surveys.
We see poor satisfaction with the way that changes in a course are conveyed. This echoes the concerns raised in the Arriving at thriving report about disabled students experiencing poor communication about teaching, learning and assessment, and often having to deal with uncertain or ad hoc changes rather than clearly planned, anticipatory or responsive adjustments.
There are also low scores by disabled students for course organisation. This resonates with a range of specialist studies which tell us that there is a huge problem with unevenness in the way that reasonable adjustments and other aspects of learning support are met between modules and by different staff on any one module.
Both of these results speak to the need to ensure that there is a clear institution wide approach to supporting disabled students, that there is clarity right from application, and that student-facing staff are well-briefed and properly resourced to fulfil their responsibilities.
You said, we need to listen
The challenging results about student voice are based on the particularly damning assessments by disabled students on the extent to which their views are valued and their feedback acted on – 76.3 per cent of disabled students versus 81 per cent of students with no reported disability.
For many institutions, there may be no disabled student forum, panel or part-time officer, while at the same time disabled students might feel that the issues they face are atomised into individual, transactional interactions. There’s a general dissatisfaction with the degree to which disabled students feel that their students’ union represents them.
This is not surprising – Jim Dickinson’s article outlined that the results for feeling represented by your students’ union are heavily correlated to the feelings about feedback being acted on. Disabled students are telling us unequivocally as a sector that we don’t value what they tell us or act on it.
When we start to look at specific conditions, the results are even more challenging.
For those with multiple impairments or mental health conditions, there are sharp drops in satisfaction with learning resources and assessment & feedback. This begs the question: how successful has the sector been in embedding universal design for learning, assessment choice, or indeed the providing clarity through competence standards as asked for by the Abrahart advice note from the Equality Human Rights Commission?
Breaking the pattern
This pattern has been clear in the NSS for some time and some have subject patterns.
For engineering and technology, medicine and dentistry, physical sciences, subjects allied to medicine and vet science, disabled students are yet again far less satisfied. This should be a wake-up call for professional statutory and regulatory bodies – a call that says that higher education providers have significant problems providing recognised or regulated courses in inclusive ways. It also makes bleak reading for those interested in growing the professional and technical workforce, especially given those with disabilities adapt well because it is a skill they have had to learn early.
All of this makes it even more important that universities look to the deep drivers of their NSS results for disabled students.
Otherwise we will face another year of unequal NSS results just in time for the OfS statement of expectations to be deployed and a review through the very same metrics for the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF).
There are ways to resolve this. Creating a strong mechanism to hear the concerns of your disabled students, promoting the Disabled Students’ UK Access Insights Survey, or signing up to the Disabled Student Commitment (DSC) will each allow a provider to hear the key issues that affect their disabled students.
With the number of students declaring a disability increasing, if universities wish to increase their NSS scores, achieve a strong TEF rating or fulfil OfS expectations, they must listen to and respond to their disabled students.
Empowerment at university for students is something that should be afforded to everyone, not one borne of privilege.
