I think I can safely say that it has been hot, so so hot and with no aircon (I know its bad for the environment!) and the sun blazing through my office window I have definitely wilted a lot this month! But despite the heat, here at NUS HQ we have been very busy and I have been experiencing the life of a National President – and its busy, but good!

We have been in the press a lot this month about widening participation, plagiarism, drop in applications, studies that say debt deters those from state schools and of course Top-up fees! All of our press releases can be found at www.officeronline.co.uk/news but obviously we have been asked for comment on much much more.

I’ll just outline the meetings and events you may be interested that I have been to, any “spare” time has been spent travelling or in the office sorting emails, letters and in meetings….

17th – management meeting, FE Zone meeting

18th – Met with Aegis trust www.aegistrust.org, met with Sarah Teather (lib dem education spokesperson) and Stephen Williams (education select committee) about the murmurings that they were changing their free education stance due to a lib dem think tank called Center Forum and the pamphlet they produced. I also went to the ULU handover party.

19th – Bilateral Meeting with Bill Rammell Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, met with Julia Goldsworthy MP (Lib dem Treasury spokesperson)

21st – I had my sisters Graduation at Leeds Met

24th – met with Prospect Trade Union about our Trade Union Partnerships project, visited Kingston SU and travelled up to Herts for Action through Advocacy, one of our summer training programmes to meet all the officers there.

25th – met Justice for Columbia

26th – met Action for Southern Africa and travelled up to Leicester for Action on Finance and Governance, another one of our summer training programmes – where I have to admit I got a little drunk with the officers and stayed up far too late!

28th – Travelled up to Edinburgh for NUSSL Scotland Informal and stayed overnight before travelling home and crashing for the evening. Unfortunately someone from a college who will remain nameless convinced me I could go and stroke one of the rabbits that were nonchalantly lying on the grass about 3 feet away from me on the beautiful Heriot-Watt campus – needless to say I was not successful, and learnt a valuable lesson!

I have also written my second Guardian Blog which can be found here

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Til next time…

Gemma x

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