{"id":26670,"date":"2026-06-30T08:23:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T22:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/?p=26670"},"modified":"2026-06-30T08:23:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T22:23:32","slug":"why-were-retiring-the-feedback-for-teachers-survey-and-what-replaces-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/why-were-retiring-the-feedback-for-teachers-survey-and-what-replaces-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we’re retiring the Feedback for Teachers survey – and what replaces it"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Semester 2 2026, <\/span>the Feedback for Teachers (FFT) survey will no longer be available to teachers<\/b>. It’s being retired as part of a wider change in how the University of Sydney collects and responds to student feedback on units, teaching and teachers – and the shift is designed to give teachers more recognition, stronger support, and feedback they can act on.<\/span><\/p>\n

The FFT isn’t simply disappearing. Its functions are being replaced by two surveys<\/strong> that work together: the mid-session Teacher Check-in (TCI)<\/strong><\/a>*, which offers quick formative feedback while there’s still time to adjust your teaching, and the end-of-session Student Experience of Teaching (SET) survey<\/a>*<\/strong>, which captures a fuller picture of how students experienced the unit and its teachers. Both are part of a move away from a patchwork of separate surveys toward more consistent, university-wide practices – a change we<\/span> introduced in an earlier Teaching@Sydney post<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here we focus on the FFT survey: why it’s being retired, what replaces it, and how the new surveys are designed to work for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

*staff login required<\/em><\/p>\n

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How has the FFT been used?<\/h2>\n

The FFT has been a confidential, by-request service for individual teachers – available for specific teaching contexts, including tutorials, lectures, demonstrations, and online teaching. Teachers could order a short mid-session version (two open-text questions, turned around within a week so adjustments could be made for the current cohort) or a standard end-of-session version of ten questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s been popular and growing – from 4,362 requests in 2022 to 6,186 in 2025 –\u00a0 the bulk of them for tutorial teaching. Most striking is <\/span>who<\/span><\/i> uses it: around 80% of requests in 2025 came from casual staff and scholarship holders (HDR students who teach), with continuing academic staff making up the rest. For many casual and early-career tutors, the FFT has been a way to build a record of their teaching for job applications, professional learning and recognition; for continuing staff, a source of evidence for their Academic Planning and Development (AP&D) conversations and continuous improvement.<\/span><\/p>\n

Understanding how teachers have actually used the FFT – and why they valued it – has shaped how the new surveys are designed to meet those same needs.<\/span><\/p>\n

What the new surveys do better<\/h2>\n

The new surveys aren’t a like-for-like swap for the FFT – they’re designed to close some of its long-standing gaps. For teachers, the most meaningful practices in the new survey suite are around safety, confidentiality and support:<\/span><\/p>\n