Question 26 of the National Student Survey asks students: “How well communicated was information about your university/college’s mental wellbeing support services?” In 2026, 85.1% of respondents across the UK gave one of the two positive answers, up from 82.3% in 2025. It measures whether students heard about support, not how good the support was.
The question
The 2026 questionnaire asks it in exactly those words, with five answers: very well, well, not very well, not at all well, and “this does not apply to me”.
It is one of the survey’s additional questions rather than its core ones: questions 1 to 25 are core, and question 26 sits under “additional questions”. The OfS’s good practice guide for 2026 lists the question on mental health and wellbeing services as asked of students in all four UK nations.
The results
The OfS reports a positivity measure: “the percentage of respondents who gave the two most positive answers”. For question 26:
| Where | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| UK | 82.3% | 85.1% |
| England | 82.9% | 85.5% |
| Northern Ireland | 84.5% | 86.7% |
| Scotland | 77.3% | 81.4% |
| Wales | 78.5% | 82.5% |
The figures for each nation group students by the nation of the provider that registers them. They come from the OfS’s headline results spreadsheets for each year.
What it does and does not measure
It asks about communication. A student who used a service and found it slow may still say it was well communicated, and a student who never needed support may answer “this does not apply to me”. So a low score points at how students find out about support: where it is described, in what words, and when they come across it.
What tends to help
There is no published evidence we know of on which methods move this question, so these are practical steps, not proven ones:
- Put support where students already look, such as the screens they open every day, as well as in the handbook.
- Name services plainly. Say what each service does and how to reach it today, not just its team name.
- Repeat it through the year, not only in welcome week: before exams and around results, for example.
- Check that messages are read. If you can see what share of a year group opened a message about support, you can tell whether it reached them before the survey does.
How Varsio helps
In a Varsio pilot, support services sit one tap from the home screen, and staff can send a notice to a year, a course or a hall and see how many read it within 24 hours, without names. What Varsio is describes the rest.