GDL satisfaction survey results: Nottingham and City beat ULaw and BPP

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By Alex Aldridge on

Graduate Diploma in Law students are actually reasonably happy

GDL-reading

Nottingham Trent’s law school has come top of Legal Cheek‘s inaugural Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) student satisfaction survey, narrowly beating City University to the crown.

Giant providers the University of Law (ULaw) and BPP University — whose London centres offer comfortably the most GDL places in the country — finished in third and fifth places respectively, with a collection of the smaller law schools taking combined fourth place.

Overall, the level of satisfaction with the GDL was pretty high, with all the law schools scoring average rankings that sat within the ‘good’ range. This was not the case in our Legal Practice Course (LPC) and Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) satisfaction surveys, the results of which will be published later this week.

Nottingham scored ‘excellent’ for ‘face-to-face teaching’ and also topped the results for ‘quality of feedback’, ‘value for money’ and ‘social life’.

City won on ‘facilities and study space’ and ‘course materials’, while it also scored ‘excellent’ for its teaching. ULaw was deemed to have the best careers service — a big deal in the field of vocational education. Meanwhile, BPP ranked highest for online learning.

In total, 110 students completed the GDL survey, with 15 from law schools outside the main providers, including De Monfort University, London Met, Manchester Met, Kaplan, Oxford Brookes, UEA, Sheffield University, Strathclyde University, UWE and Westminster University. We have combined these into a single ‘Other’ category.

The full results are below. Please note that for the ‘weighted average’ figure shown in the graphs, the lower the score the better — with one ‘excellent’, two ‘good’, three ‘average’, four ‘quite bad’ and five ‘awful’.

1. Nottingham Trent Law School

Overall weighted average: 2.27 (Good — top end)
Number of students surveyed: 8

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GDL-Nottingham

2. City University

Overall weighted average: 2.36 (Good — mid range)
Number of students surveyed: 11

City-GDL

GDL-City

3. The University of Law

Overall weighted average: 2.41 (Good — mid range)
Number of students surveyed: 32

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GDL-ULaw

4. Smaller providers (combined)

Overall weighted average: 2.74 (Good — lower end)
Number of students surveyed: 15

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GDL-other

Providers: De Monfort University, London Met, Manchester Met, Kaplan, Oxford Brookes, UEA, Sheffield University, Strathclyde University, UWE and Westminster University.

5. BPP University

Overall weighted average: 2.88 (Good — lower end)
Number of students surveyed: 44

BPP-GDL

GDL-BPP

Next up, it’s the LPC satisfaction results — coming tomorrow.