Firstly, I would like to say how pleased I am to have been invited to speak to you today.

I was delighted to hear from Sian - one of our own former National Officers and your new Assistant National Officer - Sian did great work with the Further Education sector whilst she was at NUS, in fact without Sian’s hard work during her time with us, our work in further education would no doubt be poorer.

So on behalf of my members, I want to use this opportunity to say thanks to Sian, and congratulate you on an excellent appointment.

In fact it’s all the more pleasing to see not just Sian but also your National Officer Chris Fabby here at Unison, given Chris is also a former NUS officer. We like to think we’re helping to build the union activists of tomorrow at NUS so I’ll leave my CV with you at the end of the session.

When I was asked to speak today I was only too pleased to accept. I hope that me being here reflects the growing relationship between NUS and Unison on so many levels.

Over the next twenty minutes I will discuss with you four main thing.

Offer you a general overview of our organisation. NUS is a fascinating organisation, whose dynamism comes from our members, but one that can often be misunderstood by the media and our partners alike. So for those of you who know all about NUS, my apologies, and for the rest of you, hopefully I can frame for you the organisation that NUS is.

Exciting developments
I’ll talk you through the exciting developments that have happened between NUS and the trade union movement over the last eighteen months. Our commitment to a deeper partnership, a commitment that offers great opportunity for dialogue, and a chance for unionist from the student movement and the trade union movement to work effectively together.

I’ll then go on to give you an insight into some of our campaign priorities that we have been working directly with you on in the sector. Strengthening the voice of our members, and championing the rights of so many in our society who are often ignored.

And then finally, I’ll move on to look at campus institutions and how we can interact and how our local structures can compliment each other so we can better work together, to deliver for all our members.

NUS is the largest democratic student organisation in the world, and as the Vice President Further Education for the National Union, I represent the interests of over 5 million students in colleges up and down the country.

It’s a diverse movement. Much more diverse that you would imagine if you rely on the stereotypes the press put forward. The makeup of our movement is not just your typical 16 to 21 year olds, those students are increasingly becoming the minority. Our movement is also students who are second chance learners, parents, carers and crucially workers too.

NUS has a confederate structure. Individual students’ unions that are independent and autonomous affiliate to NUS in a similar manner to the way that individual trade unions affiliate to the TUC.

Across the FE sector
With over 300 FE College unions, associations and councils in membership we represent students right across the FE sector, and thanks to policy that we have recently passed, we are now open to school sixth form councils for membership. All students unions are different, with their own local issues, but through our wide structure of Regional Organisers and Development Workers, we help them to organise and campaign on campus.

Sometimes, that’s just to secure the basics- an office, a budget, some staff support or even just some stationery.

Sometimes it’s for recognition- where colleges to fail to accept that the democratically elected president of a local union should become the student Governor.

Sometimes it’s they organise around facilities due to be privatised or closed.

But most of the time it’s just to get the infrastructure to have their voice amplified and heard. We hear a lot about customers in FE, but learners aren’t a blank sheet of paper to have learning outcomes written all over. They are not simply a personalisation plan. They need to be active participants in learning and their voice is crucial in shaping that learning experience.

A partnership with you is essential in strengthening that voice. For years the roles of “Staff Student Liaison Officers” in colleges- the people that usually support the students’ union or association- have been poorly paid and ill defined- the bottom of the FE priority list. It’s Unison that worked has positively with us and LLUK over the past year to develop new career standards and improve the standing of this vital role.

Staff in colleges
We believe that Unison is the natural home for staff in colleges that support Learner Voice activity, and we’ll be your active partners and cheerleaders when those staff are seeking better pay and recognition- just as we hope you’ll be our active partners in helping get a dormant SU set up, funded and supported effectively.

And more often than not, the way we help secure organised wins for students is by working with our colleagues in the trade union movement. Workers and Students working together in Further Education is a very broad subject area, so I want to start with some background by explaining how our work with the trade union movement has blossomed in recent years.

A couple of years ago we recognised that there were hundreds of reasons to better engage with trade unions. Most learners are workers too, workers in need of the protection of a union. The trade union movement’s ageing demographic needs young members and fast. And we know that some of the organising and campaigning techniques used by the trade union movement were something we could learn from for the benefit of education.

So 18 months ago we signed a historic protocol agreement with the TUC. By formally engaging with the TUC and dedicating resources internally via our trade union partnerships project, we are demonstrating a serious, structured, long term commitment to promote collectivist values, social solidarity and trade union membership amongst young people.

Representation
To underpin the Protocol Agreement, we have put in place formal structures to ensure continuity. Representation by NUS on the TUC Young Members Forum, and TUC input into the Policy Committees of our National Union. Regionally we support each other’s structures too. Working together, a continuous dialogue, opportunities to shape each other’s work - all helping to elevate local issues and improve interaction between NUS and TUC affiliates.

Our agreement has three main aims.

First, it facilitates joint working with all TUC affiliated trade unions at national level in the field of campaigns where we have a mutual interest, a shared agenda.

The marketization of education and public services; the promotion of welfare rights; and fighting discrimination wherever we can.

Your support and sponsorship of our Citizen 16 campaign that I will refer to later is an excellent example of this.

Second, the agreement aims to help us both develop an activist base for the future.

Working closely with the TUC Organising Academy we have developed our own models of activist development. Ensuring that today’s student activist stay involved to create a generation of activists for the future.

A specific example involved direct working with Unison on the development of Nursing Societies in colleges in the North East. Ensuring that some of the most vulnerable students in the education system can access the advice, support they need whilst engaging them with a forward thinking agenda to help shape the rights of nursing students for the future.

The work of our newly established NUS Activists Academy is ongoing and will soon pay dividends in Further Education.

Long-term
Lets hope that through this work in the long-term, we can provide the trade union activists and stewards of tomorrow as well as the education and student activists of today.

The third area of the agreement is aimed at working directly with you.

Supporting your recruitment and organising initiatives on the ground.

We shouldn’t underestimate the challenges we face.

Joint research with the TUC shows that just 10% of under 25s are in trade unions. Worse, we know that only 4% of students that work are in trade unions. We need to ensure that all working students and young workers know their rights and join a trade union.

So where you need to recruit working students amongst your ranks who are casual or temporary employees at colleges, we want to engage with you on campuses.

Where there are students undertaking part-time work to help them through their studies- we want to help get them recruited.

And when it comes to educating apprentices in further education as to which union is the most appropriate for them to join, we aim to help you in whatever way possible to get them into trade union membership.

We know that the only way to ensure student workers’ rights are protected is to ensure they have a union card in their back pocket.

Practicality
So the TUC Protocol Agreement and our commitment to joint working is not simply an ideological commitment- it’s born out of practicality for everyday working students today. It is based on a very real understanding that the financial position that students now find themselves in means that they are almost inevitably workers too and working mainly in low paid sectors to support their studies - working long hours which is to the detriment of their education. And they need the protection and solidarity of trade unions like never before.

Our FE campaigns this year reflect this agenda. I said earlier how grateful we are of your support for our Citizen 16 campaign. It aims to build on many of our joint campaigning themes.

To campaign for and raise awareness amongst our membership of the need to equalise the minimum wage and abolish age rates;

To ensure the national minimum wage applies to all including apprentices and those on work placement;

To reduce the voting age to 16; and to campaign for universal and flexible education entitlement.

This campaign dovetails well with your own priorities and indeed we are working with you nationally on a linked campaign around the tenth anniversary of the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, with a specific focus on the aspects of age discrimination.

We have made a great start on Citizen 16 with thousands of FE students and trade unionists signing up to the campaign, and with your continued backing at both national and local level, we can build greater momentum with support across college campuses.

But if Citizen 16 focuses on the younger end of the sector, don’t think we’re not focussed on adult learners too. The Government’s skills minister Phil Hope said just 18 months ago “We want to ensure that learning for people of all ages continues. We want to ensure that learning for people in the family context continues. We want to stand by our commitments to working with individuals who through no fault of their own did not get the best or most suitable education first time round” And I quote: “We remain firmly committed to safeguarding learning ‘for its own sake’ for adults of all ages over 19”

Well you can’t doubt his commitment but you can certainly doubt the achievement.

A million missing adults is hardly ensuring that learning for adults in the contexts he described is protected.

NUS is often accused of an obsession with HE Undergraduate funding, but we have clear and strong views on Further Education and Adult Learners too.

For adults, formal education represents a whole breath of civically valuable things- an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding, to test and extend talents and to change career path.

But to hear the Government talk you’d think the only reason for education was economically valuable skills. In fact Leitch and subsequent government policy initiatives have seen a deepening and broadening of the economically-focussed and qualification-measured ethos.

Government
NUS has no objection to a government wanting to boost the country economically. But when the only fundable purpose of education is economic performance, we’re in deep trouble as a society- both in principle, and we believe in practice.

It’s clear to us that employers in the UK see skills in raw economic terms: they ask, “what is the minimum level of skills I need from an employee for them to do their job effectively”? Where employers do support training it is nearly always with a specific destination and outcome in mind. And so long as that’s the direction, whatever the mechanism or quango, this attitude, supported by an “economic need” approach to education; will never adequately meet the needs of learners. For adults, education has never been about a simple transaction, adults who return to education do so for a whole variety of reasons and specific care progression is rarely one of those.

NUS believes the future of adult education must focus on societal and personal development and we must shed the obsession with demonstrable economic outcomes being the driving force of policy. Because unless we start to move in a different direction, all we end up doing is dismantling rather than reinforcing social mobility. Those who can afford it - both in opportunity costs and financial costs- might be valuable, but those who can’t will only ever be economically useful.

So we want to see a change in the Government’s approach to adult learners and FE in general, and this requires a multi faceted approach.

Autonomous, high quality colleges, equipped and supported to deliver education tailored to local needs.

Funding for adults that goes beyond the mechanistic.

Coordinated national funding and support for specialist provision that ensures learners have access to the widest possible curriculum offer.

Harnessing technology and innovations in teaching methodology to deliver programmes flexibly, effectively and matched to the needs of every individual learner.

Well paid and motivated academic, management and support staff

Quality
Information and guidance of the highest quality, delivered by independent experts, not just course options and information but clear guidance on likely opportunities etc. so learners can make an informed decision about the value of the education in abstract and concrete terms.

A statutory right to paid time off for training and development of a similar nature to holiday leave.

And when we call for these things, we like to think that our partners in Unison are shoulder to shoulder with us

At a national level, we have a strong track record of supporting trade union campaigns in the sector on issues ranging from pay and conditions to disability discrimination legislation. We understand that a quality education system is one that invests in its staff.

NUS and local students unions have also worked closely with you on campaigns around campus safety and bullying which have been very successful. We do, however, need to continue to further strengthen our working relationships at local level on campuses to fight for better funding and related issues.

The nature of student unionism in the sector sometimes makes this very ad-hoc in relation to the level of engagement and support that we can provide regarding campaigns. There are very different levels of development and organisation of student unions in Further Education, with few sabbatical officers in the sector and varied levels of staff support. So if you want to know how you can help us locally on the ground, you can help to put pressure on management and corporation structures to help us ensure that FE student unions are properly resourced and supported.

We do, however, have an excellent training and development programme at national level for FE Student Union Officers which is contributing to continued development of student unions at local level.

Through this we encourage engagement with Trade Union Reps and Joint Trade Union Committees on campus; promoting joint working and getting FE Students Union officers to regularly meet with you to find areas of common ground upon which we can both push for mutually beneficial improvements.

If you know there’s a local students’ union on the ground but haven’t yet engaged with them, go back to your institution and do it soon. Give our regional organisers a call at NUS to set up a meeting to explore the ways in which we can strengthen links locally to deliver for our mutual sets of members.

We also encourage our students’ union officers to seek out you and your reps on campus with campaign issues that are live on you campuses. This is how you could help our campaigns spread locally. If Trade Union reps who are approached with initiatives are able to take them further and beyond the workplace by promoting them at their own branch meetings and regional structures then this helps spread the message on campaigns and gets more trade unionists engaged, building momentum.

Campaigns
Involve your local students’ union in your campaigns. Get them to work with you to interact with your local labour councillors that are Unison sponsored.

The strengthening of the Learner Voice agenda via legislation last year, gives us greater opportunity to achieve success for our joint aims on campus.

Increased student places on corporation boards now means that if staff governors and student governors work together then even more can be achieved in our joint interests.

And if a college does opt to have three student governors, and if they work in conjunction with the two staff governors, then by my maths we have the five that is required to call an emergency corporation board meeting on a set matter. Now that is real power! There’s no doubt that we should work together to develop and capitalise on this.

And there’s no more pressing issue we should unite than pay. Let me be clear about NUS’ position- we know that our members get nothing out of education without the work of your members. NUS has never been firmer in its belief that staff in the sector should be paid properly and will support you all the way in your fight for fair pay. The government cannot expect to create world class skills if it does not pay the workforce properly to deliver these skills. So not only do we back your catch up claim, we’ll also back you all the way when the pay awards are ignored or sidelined locally.

There are so many local issues and so many ways that we can work together on campus.

Informed
What we need to do is ensure that all our Reps are properly informed and are engaging with each other. That they understand common agendas and know how to get the best out of campus institutions to help deliver for all our members.

I believe we have a joint responsibility to promote union membership and values particularly to learners like never before. Imagine in the future the government’s targets are met. If 100% of young people stay on until 18 and then 50 per cent go on to higher education, everyone will have been a member of a students’ council, association or union at some point in their life.

That is our opportunity- to empower and influence my members to shape and form our country’s future as your members. We should seize the opportunity open to us by organising them, encouraging them to challenge power and enabling them to change not only their course, but their workplace, their campus and their community too.

We have immense influence and power in our hands and it would be a tragedy to waste it.

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