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 the orientation process and ensuring that students are provided with 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 (self-identification)

Timing

The SES will be 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 are 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

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

Confidentiality

The Privacy Act protects survey responses. No data is released that can trace back to respondents.

To protect peoples’ identities and keep their answers confidential:

• 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

Participating organizations receive survey results in early winter. Departments and agencies receive a combined dataset of their results, with proper suppression rules applied for small respondent counts.