Said the Clerk to the Student Governor

Despite being cut short by the holidays December was a busy old month in FE land. It started off with a meeting with David Plevin, FE officer for WMANUS, an NEC delegation meeting and a visit to the FE campus of Thames Valley Uni. Then it was off to Birmingham on 3rd and 4th for Governors Training with Kat, Sian and Wes.

The weekend residential for student Governors is the training programme we run with the Association of Colleges and the Centre for Excellence in Leadership. With the help of workshops, panel debates, group discussion, a detailed toolkit, talks from leading figures in the FE sector and a chance to gain a Level 3 OCN qualification thrown in, the course aims to equip Governors with the skills and knowledge to help them make their voices heard at their corporation meetings- not just on the “Student Matters” section but on every issue discussed at those meetings. It’s a really brilliant course and the response from the delegates has been really positive, which is why it annoys me when I hear pathetic excuses from Principals and Chairs as to why they can’t find a Student Governor and who think that the way to combat so called “apathy” and disengagement amongst their own learners was to ignore it rather than register them on a professional residential toolkit. A Governor on the course told me that their Clerk had originally said that they couldn’t go on the course because then they would be getting all the development. I kid you not! Luckily nearly 60 colleges registered their Governors, lets hope its even more next year!

In December I also:

• Spoke about FE development and this years campaign at West Midlands Area Conference in Birmingham
• Attended the creation of ANGNUS- East Anglia Area NUS
• NUS 2020 vision meeting in ULU
• Meeting with AoC consultants about College Governance
• SEANUS council meeting in Canterbury
• NEC meeting
• Parliamentary Beer Group Reception Christmas party in Westminster
• Anti Racism/ Anti Fascism meeting
• European students convention dinner- well done to Dan and Julian for all their hard work putting together the convention.

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