Wherever you are in the world, by participating in the PTES you will benefit from:
- critical data that informs enhancements to your learning and teaching
- confidential and sophisticated benchmarking helping you understand how you compare with your peers and competitors
- the opportunity to include additional questions, specific to your institutional priorities
PTES was recently described by sector commentators, WonkHE, as "the nearest equivalent to the NSS for PGT students," but with greater focus on enhancement.
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What is PTES?
Provides key insights for increasing programme appeal
The Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) enables your higher education institution to gather important information about the experience of any taught postgraduate student on a Masters, Postgraduate Certificate or Diploma course.
PTES helps you to better understand your postgraduate students’ experience in the key areas of:
- Teaching and learning
- Engagement
- Assessment and feedback
- Organisation and management
- Skills development
PTES also considers students’ motivations for taking their programme and – where relevant – their experience of undertaking a dissertation or major project. We developed PTES in consultation with the sector and robustly tested the survey across diverse disciplines, institutions and students to ensure it produces valid results.
Why participate in PTES?
Benchmark your institution's provision against your peers and competitors
Data from the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) allows you to compare your institution’s postgraduate provision against others in your sector at both a discipline and institution level. You can use this information to identify areas of strength, as well as to address areas for development - increasing the appeal of your programmes and the information you can provide to prospective students.
We have designed and tested the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey in conjunction with experts from across the higher education sector. PTES allows you to:
- gain valuable data to inform enhancements to the experience of postgraduate taught students
- benchmark your provision against others, while your results remain confidential
- tailor your survey by adding your own questions
We also provide support for survey delivery, for analysis and use of the survey for enhancement.
Final Reports
These reports present the sector findings of the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES), aggregating results from all participating institutions in the sector and providing the most comprehensive picture of the postgraduate taught experience.
The information in PTES reports can be used to provide an indication of where national priorities for enhancing learning and teaching may lie. The reports also analyse results by discipline and student group, suggesting where support may need to be targeted and helping higher education institutions to interpret their own results.
Speak to us if you’d like assistance in interpreting them and using them to your advantage.
These final reports are rich in useful insights and you can download them here.
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2023 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2022 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2021 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2020 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2019 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2018 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2017 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2016 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2015 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2014 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2013 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2012 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2011 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2010 Report
- Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey 2009 Report
Ethnicity and the Postgraduate Student Experience Report
Advance HE’s Postgraduate Research and Postgraduate Taught Experience surveys provide some of the largest survey-based datasets in the sector. This report provides deeper analysis of how the Postgraduate Research (PGR) and Postgraduate Taught (PGT) experiences may differ among students of different ethnicities.
Testimonials
PTES highlights different aspects that other surveys don’t, for example surrounding student enhancement and engagement. It is not just about satisfaction or experience, it is much deeper than that – there is a real value to it.
Gabrielle Latham, Senior Enhancement Team Officer, Student Engagement and Experience Team, Sheffield Hallam University.
As we are strong performers in the National Student Survey (NSS), we wrongly assumed our students would be equally satisfied with our postgraduate provision. PTES results prompted a need for change, leading us to begin to entirely restructure our postgraduate offering.
Dr William Allen, Deputy Director for Postgraduate Taught Education, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast
Other surveys
Working with the Insights team
Advance HE’s Insights team is made up of experienced mixed-method researchers and experts in implementing surveys and other techniques for data collection. Our expert team can provide, qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods offers, underpinned by sector-wide datasets from our student surveys and our sector leading higher education statistical reports. Whether you’re a sector agency, institute, university or another organisation with a higher education offer we will work with you to help higher education be the best that it can be.
