The University of Edinburgh is the worst in Britain for feedback and assessment, according to the National Student Survey (NSS).

The poll, published last week, graded 267 colleges and universities on the basis of questionnaires filled out by 220,000 final-year undergraduates earlier in the year – leaving Edinburgh hovering at or around the very bottom of the feedback table for nearly every course.

Just 18 per cent of Edinburgh medics said they had received detailed comments on their work, while a meagre 19 per cent of human and social geography students said their tutors’ advice had helped them to clarify things they did not understand. Only one in a hundred biologists gave their tutors the highest grade for prompt feedback.

First carried out in 2005, the NSS is conducted by polling company Ipsos MORI on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. It has frequently been the subject of controversy: the Cambridge and Oxford student unions encouraged their members to boycott the poll in past years, accusing it of being “over-simplistic”. This year saw the worst scandal yet, with staff at Kingston University warning students that their degrees would be “shit” if they reported negative views on their course.

Scottish universities are not obliged to take part in the NSS, with Napier, Queen Margaret and the Edinburgh College of Art all opting out this year. But growing numbers have decided to lay their student satisfaction rates open to public scrutiny, with varying results. The University of St Andrew's won fourth place in Britain with an overall satisfaction score of 93.3 per cent, well above Edinburgh’s 82.5 per cent. Heriot-Watt comfortably beat its city rival with a score of 84.6 per cent.

While Edinburgh partly redeemed itself with good results on course organisation and learning resources, its appalling feedback rating caused a strong reaction from the Edinburgh University Students’ Association. Student union president Adam Ramsay said: “If you don’t know what you have got right or wrong, how can you be expected to improve? This is ultimately a result of the fact that academics are not rewarded for giving good feedback. The students’ association will spend this year working to ensure good teaching gets the funding it deserves.”

At the other end of the scale, University of Buckingham came out on top with an overall satisfaction score of 95.8 per cent.