About the 2026 Student Experience Survey

Goal

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) has been administering the annual Student Experience Survey (SES) since 2017 to collect information from students about their employment experiences in the federal public service.

The survey provides a snapshot of students’ work experiences in their current organization. The data collected helps guide future strategies aimed at improving students’ experiences and ensuring that they benefit from meaningful learning opportunities.

The SES asks questions about:

• recruitment
• onboarding and orientation
• work experience
• accommodations
• workplace well-being
• employment in the federal public service
• pay
• general information

Timing

The SES was administered over a six-week period during the summer student work term, from July 20 to August 28, 2026.

Survey administrator

TBS is responsible for administering the SES using the internal tool GC Forms.

Eligibility

Students were eligible to take part in the SES if employed at any point during the survey period through one of the following programs:

• a student employee program (Federal Student Work Experience Program (FSWEP)
• Post-secondary Co-operative Education and Internship Program (Co-op/Internship)
• Research Affiliate Program (RAP)
• any other student program

Students whose work terms were extended or who were rehired for a subsequent work term were also eligible to participate, provided they were employed during the survey period.

Confidentiality

The Privacy Act protects survey responses. No published or shared data can be used to identify individual respondents.

Measures were put in place to protect individuals’ identities and ensure the confidentiality of responses:

• responses are grouped together so as not to be attributable to an individual
• data from questions having fewer than 10 respondents is not published
• individual responses are never published or shared with government departments or agencies

Survey results

Survey results are published on Canada.ca and through Open Government for the public service and participating organizations. Published results are subject to confidentiality measures to protect respondents’ privacy and prevent the identification of individual respondents.