October was upon me in a flash and it seemed that I will never ever be able to survive fresher’s flu! I chaired two WNEC meetings in October, the first was in Trinity College Carmarthen (http://www.trinity-cm.ac.uk/) and we passed policy to defend the NUS Wales Women’s officer position and also to call for a parliament for Wales. At the second meeting, at the end of October and held in the NUS Wales office, we passed an amendment to oppose the fulltime Welsh language officer motion and call for a full review of how liberations work in Wales. I look forward to chairing these debates at Winter council and I am sure that we can keep these debates professional and respectful.

I attended Higher Education Funding Council for Wales’ (HEFCW) learning and teaching meeting where we went over feedback from recent QAA reviews and also touched on how the Higher Education Academy can continue to assist the development of the sector in Wales.

October was also the month of two UK NEC meetings (this time they each lasted for a whole day) to discuss the governance review findings and voting on the way forward. This was filled with a lot of debate and disagreement, but on the whole we all recognise the need for NUS to be reformed. On a personal note I am very happy with the report from a nations perspecive, we won some key changes to the document and they do mean that the future policy of NUS Wales will be taken more seriously at a UK level and that we will appear more united on the issues at hand. I have to also register my disgust at the fact that two members of the UK NEC couldn’t find it within themselves to vote for our section of the document. It was the only section passed unanimously with the exception of the votes of Sophie Buckland and Rob Owen, they put petty politics above recognising a good part of the document. The officers who voted against zone conferences or the external trustee board or the new role of congress all voted to support the nations in welcoming that section and I find it typical that a political statement is all these people ever stride for!

Immeadiatly following the second NEC meeting I headed off with Bubble to Lisbon for a five day conference organised by the European Students Union (ESU) called “Lisbon through student eyes” which was a mixture of speeches, seminars and workgroups on the impact of the Lisbon strategy in encouraging students from various backgrounds into higher education across Europe. The conference also touched on future strategy’s that ESU could persue with regard to sustainability and gender equality. It was a very useful event and I have gained some key contacts accross Europe as well as a greater understanding of what we do well and what we could do better.

Finally in October I attended the quality takes time event in London to nick ideas/share some best practice for the Welsh event in the week after Winter Council.

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/bengray/274972.aspx