11th – 17th July

• First formal NEC mtg. of the year. We spent the first 45mins discussing last weeks events and NUS’s response over the week, then created a sub group to plan out our work, set NUS responsibility areas, agreed ways of work and organisation for the year, debated and discussed NUS’s priority campaigns for the year, passed policy on Foster and the Olympic bid, and discussed the welfare work for the year as well as receiving an update from Benson on the International Students Festival he is organising. Below is the Priority Campaign outline from Julian, and myself the other campaign is still being composited and will be with you as soon as possible.

• Full staff meeting

• FE priority campaign planning mtg.

• Spent a lot of the week responding and helping students unions who were dealing with specific requests / problems as a result of the London bombings. As NUS were increasingly concerned about the rise of harassment on our campuses following the events of July 7th, and we’ve set up a legal link with Liberty the human rights organisation for students or student unions who are facing specific problems, please see either NUS website or contact me direct for more information.

• Thursday, one week on from the London bombings, and NUS were involved in the vigil held at Trafalgar Square. I have to say here that Jamal from the block of twelve has been an absolute legend over this week in bringing together NUS’s response. He co-ordinated press briefings, placards, banners, white balloons and managed to get me a place to speak at the vigil itself. At the vigil speakers were asked to read poems this is the one I read a poem by Francine Pucillo and can I say a big thankyou to Pav, who put his English degree from Cambridge University to good use and found me this poem. Having finished the poem we let off hundreds of white balloons to symbolise that sense of strength and hope, and the visual they created was quite incredible.

Life gone in an instant
With blasts of hate from air
Caught within a moment
This deed done brings despair

Contemplate this evil
What good has this deed done
Left us filled with sadness
This battle never won

Families filled with horror
Hearts filled with tears
Within us saddest moment
What purpose brings us here

Let us join united
To say a silent prayer
For those who were the victims
Their voices we must hear

People joining hands now
Creating biggest chain
Bringing forth a strength
Where evil brought such pain

Fear cannot bring power
For deep inside hate looms
The power of the people
In silent prayer resumes

Hands that reached so bravely
To help those find a way
With hearts of grateful nation
We bow our heads and pray

On this most dreaded day
We seek the strength to find a way.

Francine Pucillo

• NUS – USI bilateral, held in the Belfast Offices, discussing a variety of areas, campaigns, officer roles, budgets, office space and so on. It was also the first occasion I had to be able to meet the new president of USI Tony, and discuss the work the two organisation’s were doing together.

• Returned on Saturday lunch from Belfast, and headed straight to WHSmith, to get my copy of the new Harry Potter, much to the amusement of the National Director.

• Spent Sunday at Ian King’s CEO of NUSSL, who was throwing a summer bash for friends and family both inside and outside the movement.

Going Further, Reaching Higher

Campaign Principles

• Education should be accessible for all…..
• Free education is the key to achieving true widening participation….
• Prospective students need clear, accurate, accessible and targeted information on funding and courses in order to make informed decisions about their education….
• NUS must fight the effects of the gap in funding across the sector as well as campaign for free and accessible education as a principle...
• SUs need to be supported by NUS nationally and locally to make informed and effective representations in local decision making and implementation.
• NUS needs to lead the education agenda nationally by preparing the ground for the 2010 review of education funding.

Rationale
Education in Britain today is at crunch point. The costs of participating in education are increasingly being put onto the individual. This has lead to the costs of entering higher education (HE) spiralling and increasingly becoming debt-based and student funding in adult further education (FE) being inadequate to meet the needs of a workforce whose skills need to be updated regularly; the chronic funding gap between FE colleges and sixth form colleges is having a crippling effect upon the sector. We’re seeing courses around the country forced into closure on the basis of ‘profitability’, and research grants and private interests fundamentally guiding the curriculum. With both FE and HE having an increasingly ageing workforce, and the sector simply not having the capital resource available to invest in pay and conditions it is inevitable that we will see industrial action over the coming year. In addition the resources and facilities within educational institutions at all levels are crumbling, in dire need of serious investment.

Refocusing Education Debates
Following the ‘Top Up Fees’ debates, when NUS pushed the Government closest to defeat within the last Parliament, NUS must re-focus upon achieving and delivering for our members as a whole. For the student voice to be heard and responded to within current and future FE and HE funding debates, it is crucial that we reassert ourselves as a powerful educational lobby group and use our expertise and powerful five million strong voice to win both in the short and long term. We have to continue to raise the banner for a free and accessible education system, where access is based not upon the family’s bank account, but upon ability and aspirations. Despite the pressure from external groups, including the government, the media and from within some sections of the student movement itself we need to maintain as our long term goal free education, and this should be the core principle that drives our campaign.

Addressing Course Closures
Course closures are increasingly on the student’s movement’s agenda. Across the country, across subjects and in both traditional and post 1992 institutions the diversity of our courses are being threatened as courses are closed due to a lack of research funding. The concentration of governments research funding has led to departments rated as good losing much needed income, compounding under-funding and so jeopardizing courses. NUS believes that departments should be valued fir their teaching provisions rather than being punished for not making the top research grades. When course closures are threatened it is unsettling for students and staff alike and can adversely affect the quality of education. Constituent Members need their national union to take action nationally to target the source of this continued problem, whilst also providing support for individual CM’s.

Preparing for 2006
It’s also essential that we engage in the debates as they happen around implementing the 2006 undergraduate funding system in England and elsewhere in the UK and around reviewing the impact of the tuition fee system for 2010. We cannot afford to sit back and wait for another national executive committee to pick up the pieces; to do so would be to let a whole generation of students down.

The widening participation agenda, at the top of NUS’s agenda since the 1960’s when we first submitted to the Robbins Committee, and updated regularly, most recently with the 50% target, is seriously under threat; the new undergraduate student support package is complex, heavily debt-based and seriously misunderstood. Without us engaging with these issues nationally and locally, providing clear, accurate, accessible, student-focussed information that encourages prospective students to make the right decision about their education for their circumstances and enables their advisers to provide targeted and accurate advice could very well drop off the ministerial agenda.

Regrouping for 2010
Looking ahead, perhaps most crucial is preparing for the review of undergraduate funding system for 2010. We already know that some interest groups within the sector are already lobbying for tuition fees to be raised further and variability maintained. The threat comes in many cases from within our own institutions, as our Vice Chancellors increasingly make the case for charging students more to meet their own funding shortfalls. NUS has a crucial role to play in preventing further tuition fee rises and making education affordable for all. To achieve this, we need to be ready, and that means getting organised now, building the broadest support we can, from students, unions, teaching colleagues, parliamentarians, journalists and activists from around the world. If we don’t take the initiative then no one else will.

Building Capacity Locally, Lobbying Nationally
Our member unions are desperately crying out for support as they prepare for 2006 and 2010, and address course closures and it’s time we delivered it. In response to the national education funding agenda, students’ unions are struggling to maintain involvement in their institutions’ decision making locally. They need both high profile national campaigns to motivate and inspire and to address students’ needs nationally and practical hands on advice and support to address their students’ needs locally. As a national union we have an absolute duty to ensure that our member unions are equipped with the ideas, skills and resources to allow them to make a difference to their students’ lives both now and in the future and to engage in current and future education agendas.

Campaign Aims:

• To reassert our principles for education funding
• To build the capacity of SUs locally in addressing education funding issues with their students and their institutions – particularly, course closures, preparing for 2006 and preparing for 2010
• To represent SUs and students’ interests nationally to ensure that widening participation is maintained under the 2006 system and 2010 review and that information needs of students and their advisers are addressed
• To build a strong national coalition to address the issues for the review of HE funding in the run up to 2010

Campaign Outcomes

Course Closures
Course closures and the threat of course closures is spreading and are increasingly on the student’s movement’s agenda. Across the country, across subjects and in both traditional and post 1992 institutions the diversity of our courses are being threatened as courses are closed due to a lack of research funding. Whilst a key part of the campaign should be supporting students and officers on their campus when the threat of course closures arises NUS must also be campaigning for increased government investment, working with campus trade unions, and building broad alliances to defend threatened courses supporting teaching unions in a call to reform the RAE.

Campaign outcomes:

• Provide analysis of the current picture and develop a mechanism for SUs to feedback to NUS on future course closure threats
• Provide resources and support to SUs threatened with course closures
• Create a national strategy in partnership with UUK, ScoP and AoC for HEIs and students’ unions in the light of course closures
• For Students' Unions to have an awareness and reaffirmed commitment to a fair balance between quality teaching and research and its effect on the survival of valuable courses.

2006 – Informing Choices

Over the last 8 years of a labour government we’ve seen the cost of education increasingly transferred onto the individual student. Tuition fees in 1997 led to undergraduate HE becoming increasingly difficult to access to those form the most disadvantaged backgrounds and also became the biggest issue on the doorstep in the 2001 general election. One broken manifesto pledge later, higher education is becoming an increasingly expensive choice.

NUS is proud to have a free education policy that recognises that if we are truly to have an education system that is open and accessible to all, if the Government really believes in opportunities for all, in lifelong learning and in social justice, then they have to provide a free, fair and funded education system for all. This year we should as a national movement continue the campaign to work towards our policy objectives and ensure true equality of opportunity for all.

That means an active lively campaign that wins for the many, a campaign that motivates students, student officers and the public at large to take action for all our education. Our campaign should use a variety of tactics suited to timings events and demands.

Over the last year we have seen increasing pressure from local students’ unions on national officers and resources as local unions call upon their national leadership to provide them with the information, guidance, support and mobilising ability to allow them to deliver on campus. NUS must firstly use its role as the national voice of the learner to push for cross sector standardised bursary schemes?? Using the best practise already developed on campus.

The new funding arrangements for 2006 provide one of the largest conundrums for NUS in its history, whilst we recognise the fundamental flaws in the system that will alienate large numbers of the student body we also recognise the extensive benefit that HE delivers to the individual, to communities and to wider society. The widening participation agenda is vital to breaking down inequality and justice in British society we’re seeing ministers question the 50% target and we are seeing misinformation put many potential students off further study. We must work to ensure that the number of students entering higher and further education is expanded, pushing for resources to be invested in access initiatives and the 50% target maintained. Our national union also has a role in getting clear transparent messages out to students as to hoe the implementation of top up fees will affect their choices and debt levels. We should work to ensure that all potential students regardless of their background or route into education can easily gain accessible information that gives them a full and unbiased picture.

Campaign Outcomes:

Maintaining widening participation –

• DfES co-ordinated strategy, bringing together all WP funding and initiatives;
• maintenance of current WP funding levels for institutions;
• maintained / increased involvement of SUs in WP initiatives locally

Providing student information –

• one point of access for all HE undergraduate student information for 06. The information should be easily accessible, clear, targeted, cover all forms of support, including bursaries, other Govt funding, and course-based information;
• clear and timely information for student advisers…..

Building SU capacity and involvement in decision making –

• Building SUs knowledge and awareness of the 06 system and decision making structures through NUS resources and support mechanisms;
• All SUs involved locally within their institutions’ decision making and reviewing for the 06 system
• SUs involved nationally in monitoring 06 policy consequences through:
• regularly feeding back to NUS local decisions and consequences of the 06 system;
• lobbying their MPs for change with local case studies

2010 – Coalition for Review

With the addition of variability, the ongoing commodification of education and top up fees up for review in 2009, the threat of a fully unregulated market, and the potentials of rapidly rising fees should be the central concern of the student movement today. It is simply not good enough to wait until 2008 when the review into fees begins to form as a start point for building a campaign aimed at ensuring fees are capped. As the national voice of the student it is NUS’s responsibility to take a lead on building a broad based coalition around 2010, that is fully equipped with the arguments based around individuals (students and non students alike), students officers, students unions, academics, trade unionists, parliamentarians campaigners.

Campaign outcomes:

Building SUs’ capacity and involvement in decision-making:

• Building SUs knowledge and awareness of the review for 2010 decision making structures through NUS resources and support mechanisms;
• All SUs involved locally within their institutions’ decision making and review processes for 2010
• SUs involved nationally in monitoring 06 policy consequences ready for the 2010 review:
• regularly feeding back to NUS local decisions and consequences of the 06 system;
• lobbying their MPs for change with local case studies

Building a national coalition for 2010

• NUS leading the development of a national coalition of like-minded organisations and individuals
• Develop NUS’ vision for 2010 (or 2020 – i.e. ‘2020 vision’?) education funding as a basis for coalition support

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