The University of the Arts London muscles its way into third place in the second Sunday Times survey of university provision by Britain’s leading head teachers.

Arts London’s ranking, alongside the strong performance of many other modern universities with good teaching records, is the most striking outcome of the survey. Its success here helps lift its overall league table ranking, so that it now shares with Oxford Brookes the title of being our leading modern university.

Formerly the London Institute, the university has a worldwide reputation for teaching excellence in art, design, fashion and media. But its success in the overseas market has not taken the edge off its profile at home. It was cited for teaching excellence by heads on more than 28% of the occasions it could have been, a result bettered only by Cambridge and Oxford.

The views of more than 1,000 heads at Britain’s leading state and independent secondary schools were sought to judge how well universities were performing in the eyes of those who send thousands of children to college each year.

Heads identified across 30 subject areas the highest-quality undergraduate provision. They were asked to cite only those institutions and subjects that they felt comfortable with from personal experience. Seven subject tables are shown, left and below.

Arts London topped the tables for fashion and art and design. Only Cambridge, Oxford and the London School of Economics had more individual success.

Cambridge finished top in 11 subjects: biosciences, computer science, economics, electrical and electronic engineering, English, geography, medicine, philosophy, physics, teacher training and veterinary science.

Oxford was top in five: chemistry, European languages, law, maths and psychology. And the LSE was the leading university among heads for business, politics and sociology.

Imperial College topped the tables for civil and mechanical engineering. Eight others were successful too: Reading (agriculture), Loughborough (sports science), East Anglia (media studies), Bristol (performance arts), Durham (history), Bournemouth and Surrey (tourism) and King’s College London (nursing).

More than 100 heads responded to the survey, citing institutions almost 4,500 times in total.

Several colleges outperformed their overall league table ranking in the heads’ survey, including Liverpool (21 among heads/31 overall), Aberdeen (24/35), Brighton (35=/56), Bournemouth (37/64), De Montfort (40/90) and Oxford Brookes (42/54=).

Leeds and Edinburgh achieved success well above their league table rankings in both the heads’ and academics’ surveys. Leeds University, which ranked 29 overall, was placed at 17 by fellow academics and 15 by head teachers. Edinburgh University, at 14 overall, was placed 10 by head teachers and sixth by academics.

The Sunday Times’ second peer assessment exercise was greeted by criticism once more in some quarters. We asked heads of department and some admissions tutors in the same 30 subjects areas as head teachers to rate on a five-point scale the undergraduate provision of others in their field. More than 250 responded fully, up on last year’s total and sufficient to allow us to build the results of both surveys into our main league table.

For the first time the views of those delivering and experiencing higher education in Britain are taken into account in a university league table. The results of surveys from this year and last showed remarkable similarity, especially away from the foot of the tables where minor shifts of opinion can result in significant movement.

Paisley finished bottom of the heads’ survey, just below Worcester and Wolverhampton, while Thames Valley finished below Luton (now Bedfordshire) and the North East Wales Institute in the peer review survey. Oxford came top, turning the tables on rival Cambridge.

There is also a place in the top 10 for Manchester, which ranks 8. Our University of the Year, which has set its sights on being a world top 25 university by 2015, appears to be making inroads already on academic opinion closer to home.

o Full details of the head teacher and peer surveys can be found at timesonline.co.uk/universityguide

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