Opening the doors: overview

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NUS (National Union of Students) is reforming. While the landscape of further and higher education has changed dramatically, NUS has not kept apace. You, our members, have said as much. At Annual Conference 2007 you asked us to undertake ‘far-reaching reform.’

Over the past couple of years we have had some important wins, saving students £20 million by forcing HSBC to back down over ending interest free overdrafts and another £50 million through the creation of a tenancy deposit scheme to stop dodgy landlords pocketing cash. But we know that it is time to upgrade.

Consultation
The initial proposals for reform came from a wide-ranging consultation with you. They were passed at Extraordinary Conference in December 2007 but failed to secure the necessary two-thirds majority at Annual Conference 2008 by a few votes. Conference demanded that the membership and students have another opportunity to feed in, discuss and amend.

In the six months that followed Annual Conference, more than 100,000 students were directly targeted to give their thoughts and each NUS member had the opportunity to suggest changes. This feedback formed the basis of discussions in NUS’ leadership, the National Executive Committee (NEC), which has led to this call for an extraordinary conference and look at the new proposals.

Getting involved
NUS represents the interests of seven million students and has nearly 600 students’ unions in membership across the UK; around 400 of whom come from the further education sector. Our membership is diverse and we need NUS to reflect this diversity in order to genuinely speak for all students.

Yet, at the moment there are very few ways to actually get directly involved with NUS. You can get elected to Annual Conference, stand for one of the 27 leadership positions in the National Executive Committee (NEC), join the Finance Committee, Steering Committee or stand as one of the three national councillors from each region.

Volunteering
In a students’ union, there are hundreds of volunteering opportunities. In NUS, we are not doing enough to harness the important role they play. The result has been a feeling of powerlessness among members and students.

One of the main aims of the proposals is to encourage more people from every sphere of student life to actively get involved. If a diverse range of students are unable to get involved in NUS, we risk losing relevance. Opening our doors is vital.

The proposals would develop policy zones covering the five main broad areas of issues affecting students; welfare, further education, higher education, union development (student activities and union governance for example) and society and citizenship (issues not directly related to education that affect students’ lives, such as the environment).

The role of each Zone is to enable greater time for in-depth and wide-ranging research and discussion on issues important to students. Most importantly for widening involvement, the Zones would set up e-consultations allowing every student in NUS’ membership to get information, feed in and actively take part in the policy-making process - allowing greater opportunities to feed in should mean that our policies accurately reflect the needs of students today.

In addition to the Zones, changes to NUS’ other structures would allow more opportunities for people to have a stake in our work. For instance, the current 'block of 12' executive members will be increased to 15, five guaranteed for people in further education, in a new National Executive Council. A new Board, dealing with legal and financial matters would also include an additional six ‘ordinary’ students elected by NUS' National Conference.

NUS composition

Policy-making

Accountability

What has changed?