I’m afraid I’ve given up going week by week. It was taking far too long to get up to date. So here’s a summary of some of the things I’ve been working on recently. You can get in touch with me if you want to know more. I’ll make additions to these topics as things develop.

Education Manifesto

I was lead NEC for pulling this together and getting out to SUs, politicians and stakeholders. The response has been really positive.

You can see some of the MPs supporting it have signed EDM 805:

http://edm.ais.co.uk/weblink/html/motions.html

We are hoping for a formal response from all three major parties. I have met with the Lib Dem HE spokesperson, David Rendel and will soon be meeting with the Conservative spokesperson Charles Hendry. We are still waiting to hear back from Labour representatives.

If you haven’t read the Education Manifesto yet you can find it at www.officeronline.co.uk/educationmanifesto or www.nusonline.co.uk/educationmanifesto

Lobby of Parliament – 2nd March 2005

This was a great success. My highlight was hearing the debate between the FE students and the Minister, Ivan Lewis. It was a great debate raising loads of really good issues around Further Education. Over 100 students lobbied their MPs. We’re still gathering feedback from the day. If you were there and didn’t fill in a feedback form, get in touch either through NUS HQ or your regional officer and we’ll give you a form to fill in.

Fees and Funding 2006

I have been working with the Welfare unit on the details on the new fees and funding arrangements for 2006. We have submitted written evidence to the Education and Skills Select Committee on the topic of fees and bursaries (www.officeronline.co.uk/library/consultations/270496.aspx).

We are also writing to the Government on the issues of the Previous Study rule and student loan instalments.

We urgently need unions to fill in the ‘Are you ready for 2006’ survey. PLEASE do this if you haven’t already:

www.officeronline.co.uk/campaignsupport/welfare/269966.aspx

Quality Assurance

The January ‘Quality Takes Time’ event was a great success. This event looked at more than just the institutional audit and broadened out to look at how unions can monitor quality year on year. We also included a welsh element, looking forward to the forth coming series of ‘Institutional Reviews’. www.officeronline.co.uk/library/qaa

We are also working with the QAA to develop support for SUs wanting to take part in the new Collaborative Audit which will examine how HE institutions internally monitor the quality of their collaborative courses.

That’s it for now. Obviously there’s more to add, but I’ll do that over the next week or so. If you have any questions about these topics or anything else, please do get in touch.

Don’t forget to register to vote! You’ve got until March 11th. Find out more here: http://www.nusonline.co.uk/campaigns/education/newsandpressreleases/269654.aspx

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