Where we left off…

High Level Policy Forum on UK HE sector European Policy, Brussels – Thursday 16th and Friday 17th

Despite a passport fiasco I made it to Brussels for the HLPF. It’s the UK sector body coordinated by UUK that brings together the heads of the funding councils, UUK, Guild HE, NUS and DfES to decide HE sector policy positions to represent to the British government and European institutions like the EU, Council of Europe etc. It’s an incredibly senior body and it’s a massive opportunity to shape policy and direction that we need to take advantage of and I’ll be working with ESIB (NUSes of Europe) to do just that.

I’m organising and chairing the next meeting of the HLPF (the chair rotates) in London in April.

Education Select Committee Inquiry response meeting and catch up – Monday 20th

It seems that the House of Commons Education & Skills Select Committee has decided to ruin the Christmases of the HE sector by announcing two major inquiries which require a response by mid December!!! One’s an all encompassing inquiry on the HE sector’s structure, direction etc. (including fees!) and the other is about the Bologna Process. Sufficed to say it’s wreaked havoc with our organisation as we scramble with everyone else to get our responses together. We’ll get there in time and it’s a great chance to focus some of our thinking about the sector and where we want to be.

Priority Campaign Meeting – Tuesday 21st

Day in the office, including this meeting reviewing the campaign so far and building for next term. Keep your eyes peeled for more info!

Pro-Choice Lobby of Parliament and Public Meeting – Wednesday 22nd

Kat Stark led a great Lobby of Parliament with Abortion Rights, which I was pleased to attend and support. She also did a great speech at the public meeting in the evening which, like last year’s, I found very motivational and inspiring.

Burgess Steering Group – Wednesday 22nd

I sit on the steering group led by Bob Burgess, the VC at Leicester, looking into the degree classification system. I’ll do a proper Burgess update another time, but just to say that they really valued the student responses they received from NUS and students’ unions. Also, for those of you who are worried that the current classification system is about to be scapped – sleep easy. More on that soon…

NEC Meeting, then TQI/NSS panel debate, then NEC again! – Thursday 23rd

Thursday 23rd was one hell of a day. It started off with a Senior Management Team meeting, followed by a meeting of the Anti-Racism/Anti-Fascism committee, then NEC, then I dashed off to do a panel debate at the TQI/NSS conference, then went back to NEC.

We had a delegation meeting for NUS conference (it’s that time already I guess) where we elected Veronica King as our delegation leader and passed 4 motions to send to annual conference from the NEC: one on education funding, one on NUS Extra, one on Africa and one on childcare in FE and HE.

I won’t relive the pain of the NEC meeting here like I usually do. All I’ll say is that I’ve decided that National Council is a far more effective policy making body and I sometimes wonder if people would vote the way they do if they were sabbs again in their old unions! We also passed some ludicrous policy on the minimum wage, which we’ll hopefully reverse at the next NEC if people have any sense.

Rock Against Top-ups, UCE – Thursday 24th

So it was with great pleasure that I left NEC to go up to a really good event at UCE with music and a £1,000 giveaway to some lucky student! It was a fun way of making a serious point about the issues and I really enjoyed the speeches. Hopefully we’ll get it featured on the Admission: Impossible website shortly.

Afterwards we all went over to Aston where they were soon to have an NUS referendum and had a karaoke night on. I was disappointed to have been cut off during my song (Great Balls of Fire, a classic) simply for suggesting in the musical interlude that people should vote No to disaffiliation, just as as a Yes to Disaffiliation campaigner had done. This injustice would not have been quite so bad, had it not been committed by former Guild President Gaz Booth who claimed I’d never Aston before that night. Not only was it my third visit there that term, but I’d also been there twice on the Block of 12. It kinda set the tone for the rest of my engagement which I’ll revisit later in this blog and separately.

Aldwych Group meeting, Nottingham – Friday 24th

The next day I went over to Nottingham for an Aldwych Group meeting. Useful discussion on education issues, NUS reform and their strategic development.

LGBT Winter Conference, Institute of Education – Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th

Most of Saturday was spent catching up with work but I then went over to the IoE for LGBT conference. It wasn’t a democratic event, more a convention. I really enjoyed the discussion and debate, particularly the debate I chaired on faith and homophobia. I didn’t enjoy the Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris using his platform to effectively trash Labour’s record on LGBT rights and had a few stern words in reply. To put it mildly.

Meeting with sixth form students and Greg Mulholland MP – Monday 27th

Monday morning got off to a great start with a workshop with some sixth form students about some issues around campus life, followed by a meeting with Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland to prepare for a debate we were due to have against Bill Rammell later that week against fees. It did make me smile inwardly that the day before some people thought I was towing a party line by attacking Evan Harris and the next day I was briefing a Lib Dem MP to debate against a Labour minister. I make no apologies for saying I’d vote for the latter over the former any day of the week and twice on Thursday (if I could!) but that doesn’t compromise my ability to do my job well.

Aston Referendum Campaigning – Tuesday 28th and Wednesday 29th

The next two days were spent at Aston for their referendum campaign, which was disappointing as it meant missing the Disabled Students and Welfare campaigns Lobby of Parliament on the Mental Health Bill and the WMANUS Lobby on their Sentenced to Debt campaign. I’m blogging about the Aston referendum separately, but I’m really delighted that the Mental Health lobby resulted in some serious success for the campaign led by Alex and Veronica and that the WMANUS lobby got some extra signatures for their EDM and, most importantly, resulted in students engaging with the democratic process.

Board Meeting of ESIB – The National Unions of Students in Europe, Paris – Thursday 30th and Friday 1st December

Now I know what you’re thinking: Brussels and Paris in one month. People will start calling me Jetlag Wes soon. However, I’d like to point out that I didn’t say ANY of Brussels as I arrived after dark and left straight after my meeting and in Paris the first sight I got of the Eiffel Tower was as my plane took off and I saw it out of the window.

Instead I felt like a first time delegate as NUS conference sitting in the ESIB Board Meeting which goes on from 9am til beyond midnight. I was also joined by Colleen who attended with USI. Lots of policy discussion, lots more procedure. Interesting end to the month nonetheless.

So that was November.

Any questions – wes.streeting@nus.org.uk or 07738477353.

Cheers,

Wes

PS – does anyone read this far down my mammoth blogs? Hello Mum.

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