The Framework › Academic
Teaching Quality
Distribution of responses
How institutions vary
Middle 80% of the 105 institutions with enough responses. Academic domain mean: 7.9.
Institution is a major factor here: weaker and stronger institutions are 2.8 points apart on this topic. Where a student studies shapes their experience more than the topic itself does.
What we ask
“The teaching in this course helps me learn well.”
What students say, and why
Too much self-direction early on, and teachers who contradict each other.
"More hands-on teaching. It’s been too free at the start, when no one knows much yet."
"The workshop parts are good, but the teaching itself lacks substance."
"Teachers should agree on what’s right and wrong; they say different things."
Staff who have your back; lecturers and peers lifting each other.
"The supervisor was great. I really felt the school had my back."
"Lecturers and peers really lift each other up here."
Representative, de-identified comments from the lowest- and highest-scoring responses, translated where needed.
Related insights
The highest-rated thing in education is the teacher relationship
Of everything students are asked about, the very highest scores go to contact with a teacher: 9.1 for interaction in small classes, 8.3 for teachers who are approachable and supportive.
Behind the averageBehind the average: a 7.9 in teaching hides two different classrooms
Teaching methods score 7.9 out of 10. But the average is a blend of two opposite experiences. Behind the Average reads the comments from the students who rated it lowest and highest, and they describe the same recipe.
PatternStudents only ask for help when asking feels safe
Two of the strongest scores students give describe one mechanism: help-seeking only happens when asking feels safe.
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.
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