ONE of the world’s largest student surveys has ranked Queen Margaret University’s Student Union (QMUSU) first in Scotland.

And the university came seventh out of the 130 Complete University Guide institutions for its representation of students’ academic interests.

The National Student Survey (NSS) also showed that 72.66 per cent of students at Musselburgh-based QMU were satisfied overall with the quality of their course, with several courses achieving 100 per cent or very high overall satisfaction.

The NSS is conducted by the Office for Students (OfS) on behalf of the UK higher education funding bodies.

As well as capturing student views on the quality of their undergraduate degree, the survey gathers students’ responses to a series of questions relating to academic support, learning resources, teaching, management and assessment.

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Students were particularly positive about their experience of QMU’s Students’ Union, with 80.35 per cent of students agreeing that the SU represented students’ academic interests well, placing it first in Scotland for this category and seventh out of 130 universities in the UK.

QMU saw strong results in a number of other key areas: 88.5 per cent of students agreeing staff were good at explaining things; 86.2 per cent agreeing that it was easy to contact teaching staff when they needed to; 85.9 per cent praising the library resources for learning support; and 84.2 per cent agreeing that they were given good opportunities to provide course feedback.

Professor Richard Butt, deputy principal of Queen Margaret University, said: “We are pleased that the NSS results confirm another successful year of high student satisfaction across our portfolio areas, and demonstrate the high quality of teaching in place at the university and a strong representation of students’ academic interests.

“In particular, it’s fantastic that our Students’ Union has had such a positive impact on our students, which is a real testament to the hard work and dedication of the QMUSU staff.”