The University of Liverpool has seen fantastic improvements across all areas of the 2025 National Student Survey (NSS), outperforming both the Russell Group and the wider higher education sector across the survey as a whole.
Building on last year’s success, the results move Liverpool from 3rd to 2nd in the Russell Group, with a 3% increase on last year’s average score.
The results show significant improvements across a broad range of areas, including a 6.7% increase in awareness of mental wellbeing resources, a 6.2% increase in confidence in feedback being acted on and 5.3% increase in how often assessment feedback is received on time.
This year’s results also place Liverpool in the top 3 within the Russell Group in the following key areas:
- How well IT facilities and resources support learning (1st)
- Organisation and management (2nd)
- How well courses develop knowledge and skills that are needed for the future (3rd)
- Assessment and feedback (3rd)
- How good teaching staff are at explaining things (3rd)
The positive performance is evident across all three faculties with notable achievements in many areas. 100% of departments scored at least 85% for How good teaching staff are at explaining things, with over half (53%) scoring 95% or more. Special congratulations go to Dentistry, who ranked 1st in the sector for 6 of 7 themes and achieved an average 95% positive response across all questions.
In comparison to the 129 HEIs who appear in the Times Good University Guide, Liverpool has jumped 35 places from 62nd in 2024 to 27th this year, with a notable 6th place sector ranking for Learning Resources.
Commenting on the University’s preliminary results Vice-Chancellor, Professor Tim Jones, said: “We’re delighted that we have built on last year’s positive NSS results, improving our scores across the board. It’s particularly good news that students rate us highly in areas including Learning Resources and how well courses develop knowledge and skills that are needed for the future; these are key to the first-rate student experience we want to offer and our ambitions as part of our Liverpool 2031 strategy.
Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education, Professor Gavin Brown, added: “Today’s results reflect the hard work and dedication of our staff to delivering high quality teaching and an excellent student experience.
“This year’s results build on our strong NSS performance in 2024 and follow a raft of significant recent achievements including our entry into the top 150 universities worldwide and our award of TEF Gold for Teaching Excellence.
“As always, the NSS offers us a valuable insight into the breadth and depth of our students’ experiences here at the University, and we will continue to use these findings as we endeavour to continually build on what are strong existing foundations.”
More about the NSS
The NSS is commissioned annually by the Office for Students (OfS) and invites final year undergraduates to provide feedback on their experience of the University, covering areas including academic support, student voice and learning opportunities.
This year, over 4,300 University of Liverpool students took part, giving a good response rate of 66%.