The Sustainability Skills Survey is celebrating its 15th year!
2024-25 marks the 15th year we’ve asked students in higher and further education across the UK for their perspectives on and experiences of learning for sustainability. To bring the questions up to date, we’ve made some changes to the survey to mark its anniversary.
The Sustainability Skills Survey began life in 2010-11, when NUS was commissioned by the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) to investigate the attitudes and skills of first year students to and in sustainable development. Following the initial focus on first year students, the research was subsequently expanded to include second and third years in 2011-12 and 2012-13, tracking a cohort of students through their university courses. And the expansion didn’t stop there – in the following years we repeated the survey with all years of taught higher education students but also included students in further education and apprentices.
The last update to the survey questions took place in 2015-16, when NUS took on the running of the survey on an unfunded basis, seeing its importance to the sector for understanding student aspirations and also to understanding changes in the incorporation of sustainability within teaching and learning. Developments, including the launch of revised guidance on ESD by the QAA and Advance HE, a shift in focus towards decolonising and decarbonising curricula, increased prominence of the nature crisis and the rise of the green skills / jobs agenda, meant that a refresh of our questions was long overdue.
Institutions that have been taking part in the survey for a number of years can rest assured that our key ‘tracker’ questions remain unchanged. However, we have made changes in line with the developments listed above so that we can understand student perspectives and experiences related to these issues. You can read a full copy of the survey to see the changes in more detail.
The Sustainability Skills Survey has for 15 years provided essential data to inform the FHE sector as well as individual institutions in how they approach sustainability in education. As a result of this research, we know that institutions have been able to build the case for greater investment in sustainability education and better understand how to satisfy student demand.
The results are regularly cited in wider policy publications and in research. We are glad that this data continues to support and improve practice across the UK, and we are excited about how the 2024-25 updates will ensure its continued impact and relevance. We know that this is the longest longitudinal study of sustainability views of students in further and higher education anywhere in the world and are proud to continue this important work.
Quinn Runkle, Director of Education
As always, we’re running this year’s survey as a research opportunity for institutions. Any higher or further education institution, or students’ union, is able to take part by promoting the survey to their students. All institutions that receive 100 responses or more will receive the raw anonymised data from their students, plus a summary report with descriptive statistics. The survey will be live for completion from 28 October to 17 November 2024. We offer a prize draw for all students who complete the survey as an incentive, and our promotions pack has a range of resources to help you promote the survey to your students.
Thank you to the colleges and universities who have shared the survey with their students over the past 15 years, and thank you to the tens of thousands of students who have completed the survey too!
You can read all our previous reports in our research library. If you’ve got any questions about taking part in the survey this year, please get in touch at research@sos-uk.org