The Framework › Academic
Language Skills & Barriers
Distribution of responses
How institutions vary
What we ask
“Instructions and materials are easy for me to understand.”
What students say, and why
Too many slides and unclear relevance make content hard to follow.
"It’s not clear what’s relevant from the lecture slides."
"Too many slides to understand and cope with the content."
Teachers who explain clearly and are easy to understand.
"It’s easy to understand the teacher, and they help if there’s something you don’t get."
"Lots of knowledge from the teacher, so it’s been easy to understand."
Representative, de-identified comments from the lowest- and highest-scoring responses, translated where needed.
Related insights
No deep-dive published for this topic yet. Browse all insights or the methodology.
How we measure it
This is the topic-level average across its subtopics, on a 0-10 scale (higher is better), so an individual subtopic can score higher or lower than the topic shown here. Figures are scored responses from the last 12 months, mapped to the 2026 framework via the canonical question mapping; the cross-2020 figure on the Index uses the full response base. Movement compares the most recent six months with the prior six. Distribution bands: 0-4, >4-<8, 8-10. Cross-institution aggregate; no single institution identified; minimum group size applied.
Read the State of the Student Experience 2026
Our annual report: what three million student datapoints reveal about wellbeing, teaching and belonging, and what actually moves recommendation and retention. Free, for a work email.