Last May, we asked you to complete our annual Rate Your Union survey and tell us about your experiences with SU activities, daytime and evening events and our different services. Here’s what you said!
Last May, we asked you to complete our annual Rate Your Union survey and tell us about your experiences with SU activities, daytime and evening events and our different services. Here’s what you said!
>>What is Rate Your Union?
In Term Three of every academic year, we ask students to provide feedback about our services, events and activities as a Students’ Union. The aim of survey is to better understand how you engaged with us over the last year, and your responses help shape our plans and create actions for the next academic year. Your feedback highlights what we’re doing right as an organisation as well as where we can improve. The survey also aligns with our current strategy, Building Community, Leading Change, which tracks our key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs cover different areas of the student experience around community and belonging, student representation, inclusive events and activities, training and support for our voluntary student leaders and, finally, guidance about university life for all Royal Holloway students.
We’ve shared what you said last year below!
>>What we learned
The 2025/26 survey had a maximum response rate of 1058 students across all year groups which was comparable to the year before. Not all students answered every question in the survey because of logic skips and previous answer choices. It also depends on how much they engage with Students’ Union activities, services and events. Check out the demographic breakdown of respondents below!
Student Group Committee Member and Student Voice Leader Experience
Our student group Committee Members are voluntary student leaders who are key to our organisation and responsible for student-led activity on campus, and these students dedicate their time and energy to help shape a vibrate, inclusive student community at Royal Holloway. Building Communities for all Students is one of our four key strategic aims, and we wanted to learn more about their experiences as student leaders. The survey also asked student group members to rate their experiences and satisfaction with societies, sports clubs and media outlets last year. These responses were shared with student leaders at last year’s Student Leader Conference. See what students said below!
Student Voice and Representation
Building Stronger Student Voice and Representation is another one of our four key strategic aims. We asked our voluntary Student Voice leaders like Academic Reps, Community Officers and Executive members about their experience with receiving support and training to help them in their roles. We also wanted to know more about the ways Royal Holloway students engage with these leaders, and our annual and student-led campaigns throughout the academic year. Representing students’ academic interests and fostering a sense of belonging for underrepresented students at Royal Holloway is at the heart of what we do as an organisation. See what students said below!
The Union Helpdesk and Advice Centre
Services like the Union Helpdesk and Advice Centre fall under the umbrella of our strategic aim, Providing Advice and Advocating for Students. Both services are often first points of contact for many students seeking support. Rate Your Union asked students how they learned about, and engaged with, the Student’s Union Advice Centre and Helpdesk last year. They were also able to rate their satisfaction with these services. Students who have not contacted the Advice Centre or Helpdesk were still able to rate their agreement with one of our KPIs around whether they felt the Students’ Union was there for them when they need advice. Results are shared below!
Venues and Events
Providing Inclusive Activity and Spaces is our final strategic workstream. We asked students in the survey to list which of our venues they visited this year. Students were also able to rate their satisfaction with each of these social spaces on campus when they attend daytime and late-night events. Safety and security are a key issue we take seriously, and we also asked students whether they felt our venues and events were diverse, fun, safe and inclusive to all students at Royal Holloway. See what they said below.
Marketing and Communication
Improving how we communicate with students is a KPI we value highly at the Students’ Union. A better understanding about which platforms students regularly use to engage with us helps us improve the way we share information about our services, events and activities throughout the academic year. We also asked students, to rate their agreement around one of our KPI statements: ‘I am kept well informed about what the Students’ Union does.’
What would you change?
Every year in Rate Your Union we ask students about what sort of changes they would like to make to their student experience at Royal Holloway. We focus these questions in three areas: the Students’ Union, the University or academic department and the local community. These answers feed into our Priority 20 ballot for the Leadership elections which inform our Priority 8 for the next academic year. Below you can see the results for what 834 students said they would change about the Students’ Union last year.
Overall Performance and Key Performance Indicators
All the Rate Your Union questions in the new survey address the four areas of our new strategy and how they relate to the student experience when engaging with the Students’ Union. We concluded the survey with five questions which looked deeper into our impact as an organisation around the following themes: belonging, transparency, representation and students’ overall satisfaction with the Students’ Union. These questions were grouped together as a single list, and students were able to rate their agreement for each question. You can see what they said below.
If you want to compare Rate Your Union results from the last two years you can see our progress via this link.
>>Next steps
These are just some of the overall figures we’ve pulled from the survey. Over the summer we reviewed all the student feedback from Rate Your Union and looked at segmented data for different communities to see our impact across the student body at Royal Holloway. We are now using that information to implement positive changes in our activities and services to improve your experience with the Students’ Union this year. Watch this space for more updates!
Thank you for taking the time to use your voice to share feedback last year and look out for this year’s survey in the coming months!