Postgraduate students
PTES 2009 – 2010
Summary for publication of issues, good practice and action taken.
Survey results for 2009-2010 indicated that students across all graduate courses continue to be very satisfied with the excellent teaching and training they are receiving. 89% of students surveyed rated the quality of the teaching as ‘Good’.
Particular good practice commented on by students included the inspirational quality and dedication of a number of tutors, the range of professional actors and directors brought in to deliver workshops and projects and the intensely practice-based curriculum.
Issues in the 2009-2010 surveys were located in two main areas: Organisation and Management and Learning Resources.
A number of issues were related to the provision of central services: the state of the much-loved but high maintenance Hatfields site, the general inadequacy of social space and catering facilities, particularly at Roding House, the lack of parity between the provision of Library services at Loughton and the Colchester campus, the IT resources and IT support at Loughton compared to the resources available to students at the Colchester and Southend campuses. The School gratefully acknowledges the financial investment the University has made and continues to make in refurbishments to the Loughton campus but there is still significant student dissatisfaction with a number of central services. The School will continue to be pro-active in working with University central services to address the central resource issues raised in the PTES surveys.
A number of issues, however, refer to internal management issues mainly related to frustration caused by a small minority of staff and students using rooms they have not been allocated or have not booked, changes to teaching and production schedules and day-to-day lapses in staff-student communications. These issues were carefully discussed with Student Representatives at the postgraduate Course Monitoring meeting in Term 2 and by Heads of Course/Skills at the Staff Planning Day held on 15 December 2010. A number of actions have been agreed to address the issues. Heads of Course/Skills and tutors have been asked to ensure that they communicate more effectively both between themselves and with students to ensure that tutor absences and schedule changes are managed better. The School will make better use of Student Representatives to circulate day-to-day information about classes, timetable and rooms to relevant year groups. Progress towards addressing these issues will be reviewed at Course Monitoring meetings in June 2011.
It is worth noting that at the Course Monitoring meeting at which 2010 PTES results were discussed the postgraduate student representatives wanted to put on record that despite their minor concerns with regard to resources and day-to-day management, they were overall extremely happy to be studying at East 15 Acting School and were completely satisfied with their courses.
