NUS’ second ever FE Lobby of Parliament took place on Wednesday. The focus of the lobby was the Further Education and Training Bill, which will be going into the commons at the end of March. Over 50 students turned up to lobby our panel and their MP’s on everything from the FE Bill, to students’ union funding, cuts to fee remissions for ESOL courses to childcare. Thank you to everyone who supported the event.

More information on how you can follow up on the issues raised at the lobby with your MP’s will be available on www.officeronline.co.uk/fe soon.

If you have any feedback from the day please get in touch ellie.russell@nus.org.uk

These are the remarks that I made at the start of the lobby:

Good afternoon everyone.

Twelve months ago, we came to Westminster to put learner voice at the heart of the Government’s plans for further education. Today, one year on, we have been impressed by the commitments we have been given by Ministers, encouraged by the reaction of the sector, and included at the centre of further education policy in a way we have never been included before. So we have returned here to say, loud and clear, to politicians and our partners alike: progress is being made, new measures for learner involvement are becoming a reality, and learners feel they are gaining a voice in the process of learning.

But we are at a crucial stage in these developments. In a short time, all the remaining questions will be resolved, and the final proposals will be enacted into law. This is a time for engagement between NUS, our partners in the sector, and the Government, to be at it’s highest, so that the real outcomes match the aspirations we all have for a sector that is truly responsive to its most important stakeholders.

So let’s consider some of the great progress, and some of the new and remaining challenges.

In the next few months, colleges will be given a handbook of guidance on how they should construct strategies for learner involvement. This represents a vital keystone of the new legislation – the duty on colleges to engage with learners, above and beyond the existing requirements in relation to students’ unions. And above and beyond is no understatement. The new duty is about outcomes, not just processes; it implies a need for learning providers to change their policy and approach to take into account the needs of learners, as expressed by learners. Nothing in the 1994 Education Act makes that happen, so this is substantial advancement of the role of learners, and we strongly welcome and support it.

And to match it, the near future will also see two student governors on every college corporation in England, a crucial practical instrument in ensuring that learners are comfortable and confident in expressing those needs. We congratulate the Government on its continued support for this much needed improvement to college governance, even though it remains controversial in some parts of the sector.

And we call on colleges to take other practical steps towards a future of learner involvement, by ensuring that the existing requirements are properly put in place today. Learners need the opportunity to participate in democratic elections, to discuss their learning autonomously, and construct their own feedback. These are the things that will enable learners to develop to the point where they can meaningfully contribute to improvement in colleges. They are imperative to the success of strategic engagement with learners, and the costs involved are far outweighed by the benefits a college can reap through their full and comprehensive implementation. They know that in Chichester, they know it in Norwich, and they are discovering it in Cornwall. I look forward to the day when all colleges understand the benefits that a vibrant student democracy can bring.

And that vibrancy is also critical to the future of learning policy in further education itself. Because there are major challenges before us where success will require student representatives in further education to be more active than ever before. First amongst them, we need to work with the Government and our partners in the sector to bring about the swift extension of foundation degree awarding powers to the FE sector. This is an important and bold move to further extend the opportunity of a higher education to those who are presently least likely to participate. And if anything proves that it is so important, it’s the way that certain elements in the universities’ lobby have looked down their noses, aghast at the very idea.

The opposition we have seen to this proposal is farcical. On one side of the stage, a university parades out of the wings clutching a widening access initiative, while on the other side, a college offering a foundation degree is shoved into a trapdoor. It isn’t just that the quality of higher education can be just as high in colleges, although it can be. It’s that for the learners who go to a college, learning to a higher level within a college setting instead of a university setting will usually be even better than a university, for them. This is about appropriateness of teaching methods, it’s about the suitability of the learning environment, and it’s about the availability of courses near enough to where that learner goes to work every day – and also near enough to the school where their kids go.

Which isn’t to say that this is a perfect policy. There are ways to improve it, and we would ask the Government to seriously consider whether parity between HE in universities and HE in colleges can truly be achieved until learners can direct their complaints to the same, independent body. So we’re asking you to extend the remit of the OIA to the FE sector, because a mature complaints system is an important sign of a mature sector, and because it will help to settle the argument in our favour: what’s good enough for universities is good enough for colleges.

And astonishingly, the things I’ve mentioned are all relatively short-term changes. There is huge reform of the FE sector coming, from equipping the sector to play it’s vital role in plugging the national skills gap, to giving colleges more power to monitor and manage their own provision, and the quality of that provision, with less control from the centre. As these changes are introduced, a new “demand led system” is going to be tested, in which the learning experience will be made personal to the individual learner. This is incredibly exciting, bold and visionary. And to make it a success, learners have got to be kept firmly in the driving seat, alongside employers and local communities. That’s why the current moves to develop the voice of learners are so important. Because you can’t build a responsive, personalised, self-regulated system for future learning to take place, without building profoundly meaningful engagement with learners.

So as learners, we look forward to supporting the sector in making these profound changes.

We thank the Government for the steps it has taken so far, and ask you to do more.

We congratulate colleges for the steps they have taken so far, and ask you to do more.

And above all, we anticipate the day when we can come back to Westminster and celebrate a further education system in which we are listened to, empowered, and embraced as partners in the production of learning.

Thank you.

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