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The purpose of this research is to support responsible decision-making in Higher Education (HE) settings by understanding what type of learning journey satisfies students most in their HE experience and what they want from the learning.

This paper analyses the key tool used to assess satisfaction factors for UK students, the National Student Survey (NSS). It adopts peculiar regression statistical tests to identify the NSS items that influence “overall student satisfaction” by reviewing responses over 9 years from accountancy students at business schools located in England.

The findings of the study provide evidence that students are most satisfied with a learning journey where they are part of a course that is “well organised and running smoothly”, which provides “intellectual stimulation” that helps in developing their ability to “present themselves with confidence” and provides “academic advice and support”. The findings of the paper show that students are not satisfied so much by utilitarian aspects of learning but rather those that relate to who they are and where they are in their learning journey, the level of intellectual stimulation they have experienced, the self-confidence they have developed and the supportive relationship they have developed with academics. A factor that did not relate highly was “assessment and feedback” which has been the focus of much university resource. Results show the factors that impacted overall satisfaction are most related to students wanting to develop personal responsibility. These findings shape the key principles of responsible design and management of HE programmes and influence strategic decision-making.

Focussing on helping students experience, the type of learning journey that develops the virtue of responsibility emergent from the analysis will not only satisfy the student but will also have a knock-on effect of improving NSS scores, university league table ranking and accreditation under the Teaching Excellence Framework. The improved reputation aspects would then feed back into increased student satisfaction (Dean and Gibbs, 2015). The findings will also help HE managers and leaders to evaluate their decisions through three lenses: responsibility, students’ experience and students overall learning journey.

Much of the information published on the NSS have been predominantly descriptive and has resulted in decisions being made for students based on uninformed analysis of the survey’s results. This study uses advanced statistical modelling to evidence the relationship between factors of the NSS and overall student satisfaction providing key information regarding students’ importance to the type of learning journey they value and that this relates to a desire in wanting to develop responsibility. This study shows the link between factors of the NSS to provide useful lenses for HE managers and leaders to use to support responsible decision-making processes.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse student satisfaction as identified in the UK National Student Survey (NSS) at an institutional level in one post-1992 UK university, to discuss the perceived factors behind changes in NSS results and to identify the possible impact of institutional-level quality enhancement interventions.

The paper reviews some of the literature available on the NSS, teaching evaluation and on learning and teaching leadership in higher education and demonstrates by comparison with practice how different approaches to change management were experienced.

Over a period of eight years within one HEI, it was possible to identify four distinct phases of NSS scores and to identify strong trends in both quantitative and qualitative results.

It is postulated that evidence-informed institutional-level interventions in learning and teaching practice can have an impact on the external evaluation of student satisfaction when they are part of a coherent strategy. However, although some aspects of the work are generalisable to other contexts, it is also recognised that individual environments and experiences will impact on outcomes.

This paper argues, first, that the NSS could be as much an indicator of organisational culture as a measure of student satisfaction with courses; second, that areas that students highlight as being important tend to be consistent and third, that regardless of the foci or type of interventions, senior staff level engagement is a critical factor in achieving high NSS scores and enhancing student satisfaction.

The paper will be valuable to those using the NSS for quality enhancement at a strategic level.

The purpose of this paper is to solve the shortage of the existing methods for the prediction of network security situations (NSS). Because the conventional methods for the prediction of NSS, such as support vector machine, particle swarm optimization, etc., lack accuracy, robustness and efficiency, in this study, the authors propose a new method for the prediction of NSS based on recurrent neural network (RNN) with gated recurrent unit.

This method extracts internal and external information features from the original time-series network data for the first time. Then, the extracted features are applied to the deep RNN model for training and validation. After iteration and optimization, the accuracy of predictions of NSS will be obtained by the well-trained model, and the model is robust for the unstable network data.

Experiments on bench marked data set show that the proposed method obtains more accurate and robust prediction results than conventional models. Although the deep RNN models need more time consumption for training, they guarantee the accuracy and robustness of prediction in return for validation.

In the prediction of NSS time-series data, the proposed internal and external information features are well described the original data, and the employment of deep RNN model will outperform the state-of-the-arts models.

The purpose of this paper is to document the types of and any changes in the budgeting and performance management practices of New Zealand primary educational organisations and explain why they occurred using an institutional theory framework. In doing so, it will provide an understanding of past budgeting and performance measurement and reporting practice, as well as consider the policy implications for the contemporary public‐provided primary education system.

The paper uses a historical archival‐based case study approach.

The historical evidence suggests that from 1844 until 1859 budgeting and performance management practices in educational organisations changed as the provision and control of education moved from not‐for‐profit community‐based organisations to become a predominantly public function. The budgeting, inspection and performance management practices and changes observed in the primary education providers were directly related to their need to obtain legitimacy and procure resources.

The detailed information regarding historical budgeting and performance management practices provides rich background material for researchers as well as suggesting that split responsibility and control between the community and government for education creates a tension between the two controlling bodies.

This paper is the first study of internal accounting and performance reporting practices in a mid‐nineteenth century New Zealand education context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in accountability as the provision and control of education moved from private nonprofit organisations to a public sector provider.

Analysis of nineteenth century archival documents from significant primary educational providers in a major early New Zealand settlement.

The nonprofit education provider utilised public meetings including public examinations, whose effect was to develop trust based on the education values it shared with its community of stakeholders. It also published financial reports which, along with inspections and statistical returns, were preferred once the government became the education provider. Such publications and inspections indicated bureaucracy and control. Nevertheless, government funding, rather than the nonprofit organisation’s dependence on its community, made education provision sustainable.

It has been suggested that the differences between public sector and private sector accounting and accountability are not always sharply defined (Carnegie and Napier, 2012). However, this case study shows that a change of education provider did lead to a marked difference in accountability. While theory suggests that public sector accountability should enhance democracy, the party best meeting this brief was the nonprofit provider, with the public sector provider preferring hierarchical accountability. It could be argued that funding dependence drove these different approaches as community accountability was traded for financial security.

Distinctive study of accountability practices to external stakeholders, in a mid-nineteenth century education context.

Since inception, National Sample Survey (NSS) is the only large-scale household survey in India, periodically collecting data on morbidity and health care conditions in the country. In these surveys, information for all members of sample households was gathered either from head or a key informant of the household. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study was developed to examine whether the use of proxy respondents influences population estimates of morbidity prevalence rates and factors associated with morbidity prevalence rates among adults based on latest 60th round NSS data on morbidity and health care.

The results showed that use of proxy in this survey had severely affected morbidity prevalence rates among adult persons aged 18 years and above. The result showed that use of proxy in the NSS 60th round survey had resulted in underestimation of morbidity prevalence rates among adults in such a way that overall morbidity prevalence rate was 45 per cent higher in direct interviews (148 per 1,000 adult persons) compared to those answered by proxies (81, p<0.001). There were variations in underreporting of morbidities by socio-economic and demographic characteristics of proxies but the direction of the association was the same.

The study conclude that morbidity data from the NSS can be used regardless of use of proxies and that the association between worse health condition and socio-economic and demographic factors persisted even when information was collected from a proxy. However, suitable adjustments for proxy-reporting should be made while estimating realistic population at risk from the NSS data.

This is the first manuscript that has made an attempt to examine the effect of proxy-reporting on morbidity prevalence in NSS data. Since its inception in 1955, NSS data are the only data source available in India on morbidity and health care conditions. A large number of research manuscripts have been published using this data and there were serious concerns among the researchers on data quality particularly about the reporting of health status. NSS 60th round first time provided information on reporting status, i.e. proxy vs self. In this context, the present study made an effort in this direction.

To develop and test a rapid method for evaluation of the corrosion protection (CP) of carbon steel (CS) by vapour corrosion inhibitors (VCI) films.

The determination of the CP by VCI on CSs is commonly carried out in a chamber applying neutral salt spray (NSS) and usually it takes many days. The common disadvantage of the various rapid methods created until now is the need of special laboratory equipment making their application complicated and inconvenient for field tests. The method for CP measurement of VCI films on CS described in this study is based on measurement of the height of the anodic peak under galvanostatic condition applied earlier on other types of films and coatings. By means of a calibration plot: peak height (V) vs NSS protection time (s), CP of VCI films on CS specimens expressed in hours NSS is determined in a few seconds without using an NSS chamber. Measurements of CP by VCI films under field conditions are performed applying a hand held tester.

Two groups of CS UNS G10180 steel specimens with increasing thickness of VCI films were studied – one in an NSS chamber and the second by the application of a corrosion tester. The correlation between the results obtained for the two groups of specimens was found and a calibration plot was made.

Based on this method, a special corrosion tester was developed, able to measure under field conditions as well.

The method subject of the paper is a further development of a galvanostatic method developed by the authors for CP evaluation of chromate films of Zn and Cd coatings. The method was modified according to the properties of VCI films

This paper aims to explore how resilience is evident in healthcare supply chains in the public sector when faced with pandemic disruption and to identify any learnings to inform recovery and future-readiness phases.

An exploratory case study was conducted, consisting of seven semi-structured interviews with public sector supply chain actors in the healthcare personal protective equipment supply chain. The data included document analysis.

Key findings show how specific resilience strategies such as agility, collaboration, flexibility and redundancy, contributed to supply chain resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic response. Collaboration is identified as a key mechanism for resilience with public sector networks viewed as facilitating this. Established collaborative relationships with suppliers pre-pandemic did not support increased visibility of tiers within the supply chain.

This is one of the first papers to provide in-depth resilience insights through an example of healthcare supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Establishing timely national product design standards is an important cooperative activity capable of capturing economic benefits from having the national product design standard adopted for global commerce. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an exploratory analysis of five global economic powers' – Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA – national standards strategy (NSS), comparing them for commonality in institutional standards setting policy approaches, i.e. there should be a general “convergence” in specific NSS policy initiatives among similar, economically developed countries.

The five national standards strategies are evaluated for distinctive policy initiatives, with common policy initiatives combined, resulting in 18 distinctive policy initiatives found among the surveyed population. Each national standard strategy is then compared to the 18 policy initiatives, with commonality recorded.

Contrary to any preconception that economies considered comparable in economic development would tend to converge around similar NSS policy initiatives, the evidence reveals there is less harmonization (the results show convergence is overwhelmingly in the moderate/low categories – 14 policy initiatives, or 77.8 percent), with initial evidence indicating that the degree of public or private institutional involvement in technology standards setting may affect the types of policy initiatives included in a NSS.

The paper is exploratory in nature, with only five nation‐states in the survey.

The paper provides insight into: the strength of a country's NSS versus a competitor nation; and public and private sector development of the national innovation system.

The paper offers an exploratory evaluation of harmonization of NSS across countries and its significance to the national innovation system and global competitiveness.