Hello everyone.

Of all the different groups of students NUS seeks to represent, there is one where that representation stands out as being especially complex, difficult and demanding. International students often face many obstacles in pursuing their education, as we know, but some of the most crucial problems are not in learning itself, but in the capacity to actively participate in shaping that learning, and the environment and context where it takes place.

Higher education is rightly becoming more responsive to learners’ needs. A new concentration on quality assurance and enhancement has been developed over the last few years, and this increasingly makes student engagement as one of its cornerstones. Students’ unions are no longer mere tangents to institutional strategy; they are becoming central to institutional strategy. Student officers are no longer simply reacting to learning and teaching policy; they are seeking to be active partners in creating that policy – and in supporting its practice.

But this new agenda on student engagement is not a panacea. It has limitations, and it establishes its own very tough challenges for all of us involved in student representation. And one of the most critical challenges is in engaging and representing diverse voices.

Which is why NUS organised a seminar of students’ union leaders and managers last week on that very subject, which I attended. Over the course of two days, we debated how to engage better with all those students who might are often termed ‘non-traditional’, or in other words, not full time home undergraduates. And that use of the phrase ‘non-traditional’ itself sums up the depth of the problem we’re facing. It seems to me quite curious, just in our terminology, to identify groups of people by what they’re not, instead of what they are. In the same way, I’m concerned that we view many of those who we want to represent through a ‘deficit’ model. If you have that view, you will always be concentrating on the individual, trying to help those who are ‘non traditional’ fit into the traditional structures as best they can. I’m going to argue here for a more radical approach, taking international students as my example.

But to get there, we need to first expose, in more detail, the complexity of the problem.

Firstly, we need to confront the simplistic idea that you can somehow make provision on a universal basis for all international students, as if they were all the same – a homogenous mass of students all with the same interests and concerns. It just doesn’t work like that, and we shouldn’t behave as if it does. In reality the needs of international students are even more diverse than the nations from which they come. So if we are going to respond properly to their needs, we must take a more flexible approach. Our national secretary put it best last week: we need to understand not just diversity, but the diversity of diversity.

Secondly, it has to be understood that there isn’t really any more money going into student representation, even though it is becoming much more important within higher education. There is enormous pressure from within students’ unions to maintain what they already provide, which comes from those students who already actively participate. At the same time, pressure is applied by institutions, desperate to ensure they remain competitive in the market, and therefore wanting their students’ union to get the things that are linked to recruitment right before looking at other areas. Although representation must be seen as the core function of a students’ union, it’s hardly a boon for recruitment.

Thirdly, it is very difficult to draw international students into the representative community around the students’ union. It is a prerequisite of good student representation that there should be a sense of collectivism amongst the students who are being represented, and this should run through the ways they participate, whether in sports and societies, as a volunteer or student staff member, and ultimately through the democratic structures. But there are well-understood barriers to participation for international students, in language and differences of culture, that make it tough to break into the first levels of involvement. So they become marginalised within the democracy and at the centre of the representative function.

All three of these things are made worse by the huge inertia holding back change; I should stress that this is no-ones fault – it is simply that membership organisations develop naturally to favour those who participate the most, and so it takes enormous effort and energy to take on established norms, long favoured methods and traditional approaches. But it is something we have to strive to do, and take more seriously than ever before. Partly because the policy climate in higher education demands that the voice of learners is given better definition, and made broader and more diverse. Partly because it ensures that student organisations are giving the best possible value for money to the sector, and supporting our shared strategic aims in widening participation and improving the student experience. But mainly because it’s just the right thing to do.

So I said I would argue for a more radical approach to strengthening and developing the voice of international students – an approach that takes on the problems I’ve outlined, and attempts to find new ways to secure their effective representation.

I think that we have to start by looking at the very lowest level of engagement, at the very first experiences that international students have when they begin their courses. Because I believe that, in many cases, the disengagement of international students starts on the first day of term. It matters what happens in those very early days, and we need to make sure that groups are not allowed to segregate themselves in seminars and other study groups. The basic social unit within any student body is formed within those groups. It seems like a very obvious point, but I really think you do have to start there.

Because once you have made sure that international students are fully involved within the classroom, it’s easier to for them to become participants in social and cultural activity outside the classroom. If there is any area where we should concentrate our efforts the hardest, it should be in supporting and facilitating that process of socialisation. Specific practical steps should be taken to break down barriers to access for international students to get involved in sports and societies. There are the obvious language barriers, of course, but this is often much less of a barrier than we might imagine. Far more important are the differences of culture that can make common ground hard to find. We’re all familiar, for example, with the problems associated with the UK drinking culture, and it isn’t only international students who can be affected – but they very often are some of those worst affected, and students’ unions need to take more seriously their obligations to create inclusive provision. It might also be helpful for unions to provide all their affiliated clubs and societies with clear guidelines for involving international students.

And why this focus on socialisation through clubs and societies? Because I believe it is the first step to genuine involvement on the same level as home students, and the gateway to participation in effective self-representation. By fully bringing international students into the wider student community as equal members, you build their confidence and create the conditions for them to take up much more sophisticated representative activity, articulating their own voice, and the voice of their peers. It’s not about treating international students as if they were the same as other students – they aren’t. It is about making it possible for people to find their own voice and use it effectively. It is about enabling people to shape their own experience and their own engagement. It’s the exact opposite of a deficit model of participation – it’s an model of positive action and change.

But it isn’t an easy option. Quite the reverse. The easy option would be to create an international sabbatical and claim that it means you have representation for international students. That’s OK, as far as it goes – but I’d rather see a few more international students taking up office as union Presidents. Come to think of it, I’d rather feel that one day it might be possible for an international student to become President of NUS. I don’t think that is possible today – chiefly because there aren’t enough international students getting involved at the grass roots.

So I’m in favour of a radical new commitment to championing diversity and opening our structures and cultures to all. But I’m also prepared to play the long game to do it – and I think you have to be.

We have to do some groundwork to make sure this approach can even be attempted. It’s crucial, for example, that we ensure international students are not disadvantaged by standing for full-time sabbatical office in their union by having to jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops relating to their immigration status – and NUS has taken this up with Government Ministers. We hope that it will be confirmed that sabbatical officers who are international students do not lose their student status.

And I also think there are genuinely imaginative ways to promote this kind of agenda within institutions. Students’ unions could make major improvements to their offer of events and cultural activities – and do it economically by getting autonomous clubs and societies to do most of the organising and promotion. HEIs could offer financial incentives to students’ unions for hitting certain participation targets for international students. The curriculum itself could become more internationalised, so that students can more easily bring their own experience and culture to the subject. There are endless possibilities.

And we have to make those possibilities a reality. Because there are certain student voices that are marginalised in today’s higher education, and international students often fall into that category. And when, as we know, international students pay enormously high fees for a university education in the UK, that’s just not good enough. It isn’t a case of falling into a consumer mentality – it’s a matter of making clear that the experience for international students should be as good as anyone else’s, and that requires them to have a strong and powerful voice.

Not only that, but if we can create an environment in which international students participate to the fullest, then the cultural benefits for them and for others who they learn alongside are enormous. There is a remarkable opportunity, which we can grasp, to share our values with the rest of the world in a positive way – which is incredibly important when our foreign policy is not well regarded in some regions. Not only that, but we can foster a deeper understanding of the world and its peoples among those in higher education who grew up in this country, and might have limited experience of other places. Over time, we might develop a set of shared values, which transcend borders and cross cultures; to take the values of students’ unions in particular – democracy, equality, collectivism – surely these are worth making as widely understood and practised as we can?

The challenges are immense, but the prizes on offer for success are enormous. I hope to be able to work with you in the future to make it happen.

Thank you.

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