The student feedback TEQSA expects a provider to collect covers three layers: feedback on each unit of study, feedback on the course as a whole, and feedback on the services that surround it, from admission and orientation to support and complaints. Collecting it is the easy part. Standard 5.3 of the Threshold Standards asks that feedback inform monitoring, review and improvement, and the evidence assessors look for is the record of what changed because a student said something.
This article covers what to collect, how to close the loop, how the academic board should see it, where the national surveys fit, and what the evidence trail looks like, drawing on fifteen years of TEQSA registration and renewal work with private providers.
What student feedback TEQSA expects you to collect
Standard 5.3 (Monitoring, Review and Improvement) in the Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2021 requires that all students have opportunities to give feedback on their educational experience, and that this feedback informs institutional monitoring and review. The standard is written in the present tense. It does not ask whether a survey instrument exists; it asks whether feedback is being gathered and used now.
In practice that means a unit-level survey at the end of every teaching period, a course-level survey at least annually or at exit, and a means of hearing about services: the library, the learning management system, the student support officer, the admissions process. The service layer is the one most private providers forget, and it speaks directly to Standards 2.3 and 3.3. A student representative on the academic board, a staff-student liaison meeting and a complaints register that is analysed rather than merely kept are all student feedback too, and all of them count.
Why closing the loop matters more than the survey
The student feedback TEQSA assessors read most closely is not the raw survey data. It is the document that shows what happened next. A low score on assessment clarity should lead somewhere: a revised brief, a changed rubric, a conversation with the lecturer recorded in the unit review. Standard 5.3 expects the results of monitoring and feedback to be used to guide improvements, and an assessor will ask for an example.
The failure I see most often is a provider that surveys diligently, files the results, and cannot point to a single change that flowed from them. The second most common is the opposite: changes made in response to complaints but never connected in the record to the feedback that prompted them. Either way the assessor sees a broken loop.
Closing it takes a simple discipline. Each survey cycle produces a short response document naming the actions taken, and the following cycle reports whether they worked. Students should be told what changed, because a provider that closes the loop with students tends to get better response rates the next time.
How should feedback reach the academic board?
Standard 6.3 requires academic governance to oversee academic quality, and the academic board cannot do that without seeing feedback in a usable form. The board does not need every free-text comment. It needs a report each semester showing response rates, unit and course scores against the provider's own benchmarks, the units flagged for attention, and the actions taken and still open.
The minutes then need to show the board engaging with that report: asking why a unit was flagged twice, requiring a coordinator to respond, noting when an action closes. That record turns feedback into academic governance. Our article on designing a continuous improvement framework for course reviews describes how these reports feed the comprehensive course review cycle, and our piece on using learning analytics to meet TEQSA's continuous improvement expectations covers the data that should sit beside them.
Where do QILT and the Student Experience Survey fit for a private provider?
The national Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching surveys, including the Student Experience Survey and the Graduate Outcomes Survey, are open to non-university providers, and I recommend participating as soon as the provider has students to survey. They give the academic board an external reference point, which Standard 5.3 also asks for, and give TEQSA a comparison it trusts.
Two cautions. Small cohorts produce volatile results, so read year-on-year movement rather than any single figure. And national surveys do not replace the provider's own instruments; they cannot tell you which unit needs attention or why. A good QILT result is evidence of student satisfaction, not of quality assurance, and an assessor knows the difference.
What does the evidence trail look like at assessment?
At initial registration the provider has no students and therefore no feedback, so TEQSA reads the policy, the instruments, the reporting template and the academic board terms of reference, and asks whether the system will work once students arrive. For renewal, the renewal of registration guide makes the self-assurance report and its evidence index the centre of the application, and feedback is one of the places where the evidence must show operation, not existence.
The trail an assessor follows runs from a survey result, through a unit or course review, to an academic board paper, to a minute recording a decision, to a later report confirming the change was made. A missing link becomes a request for further information. Our article on how private providers can use TEQSA reviews to improve student outcomes explains how the same trail supports the outcomes data TEQSA reads alongside it.
My view: feedback is a governance record, not a marketing one
Providers tend to think of student feedback as a satisfaction measure. TEQSA thinks of it as evidence that the institution listens and acts, and the student feedback TEQSA weighs most heavily is the kind that led to a change the provider can document. Build the loop first, choose the instruments second, and make the academic board the place where the loop visibly closes.
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Frequently asked questions
Does TEQSA require a specific student survey instrument?
No. The Threshold Standards require that students have opportunities to give feedback and that the feedback informs review and improvement. The choice of instrument is the provider's, though participation in the national QILT surveys gives a useful external reference.
How often should a private provider survey students?
In my experience a unit survey each teaching period and a course-level or exit survey each year is the workable minimum, supplemented by service feedback and a student voice on the academic board.
What if response rates are low?
Report them honestly and show what you are doing about them. Assessors are more concerned by a provider that hides low response rates than by one that reports them and closes the loop with students to lift them.
Can student feedback be handled by management rather than the academic board?
Management can run the surveys, but Standard 6.3 places oversight of academic quality with academic governance, so the academic board should receive regular feedback reports and its minutes should show it acting on them.
Dr Brendan Moloney is CEO of Darlo Higher Education, Australia's largest specialist TEQSA consultancy. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, is a Cambridge University Press author on governance in higher education, and has advised private providers on registration and course accreditation for more than fifteen years.