Monday was the first NEC meeting of the year. This is where the NEC agree its priority campaigns for the year ahead. As a result we agreed to have an Education priority campaign focusing on three main themes. Course closures are threatened in many institutions across the UK and its time that NUS did something to campaign and be there for officers when they are campaigning against the closure of valuable courses. The other element of the campaign is to build alliances and capacity for campaigning in 2006 with the introduction of top-up fees. It is crucial that students and unions are mobilised for action when this regime is introduced. Also we need to look ahead to the review of the policy in 2009. Many universities and vice chancellors are lobbying the government to allow the £3000 cap to be lifted so that they can charge whatever they like. I believe and NUS believes that this will exclude yet more students from entering higher education and deter the very people that the government wishes to attract to university.

This campaign is about NUS building for the future as well as supporting officers and campaigning on current issues. We stand by our policy of free education and remain completely opposed to all forms of tuition fees and means testing.

Also this week I have developed an Education Strategy. There are many areas of my work, which do not make it into the education priority campaign. However, they are still important and need to be carried out. This includes issues like campaigning for anonymous marking. I am currently in the process of completing this document and you will begin to see lots of work coming out of that.

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