Council Report: 5th-25th November 2009

OPRs and Periodic Reviews

Since the last Council meeting, I have almost completed the Operational Performance Review cycle for this year, with the Library and Life Sciences OPRs in the last three weeks. Unfortunately I was ill on the day of the Library OPR, but I did send in comments and issues which were raised by the panel and I will be chasing up. The three main issues I raised were 24-hour opening and the availability of computers and textbooks: I asked for a feasibility study to be undertaken regarding costing and planning of year-round 24-hour access, and for maps of alternative computer clusters in other buildings to be placed in overcrowded library clusters like Blue 1. Availability of core texts is a resource issue: there just isn’t the money (or room) to keep enough core texts but the library are trying various initiatives to combat this, including digitising many more resources and hiring e-book readers to certain pilot schools.

I also sat as the student representative on the five-yearly periodic review of the BSc Speech & Language Therapy programme, which took an entire day plus many hours of reading beforehand. I consulted with students and made sure that their issues were raised, and many points I brought up in this review will be in the final report and recommendations to the programme team.

These reviews are more than just long meetings with lots of reading: they are the most important thing that I do for a number of reasons. Firstly, part of the Union’s “deal” with the University to get the funding they give relies on us sending a rep to these reviews. Secondly, they give me a really in-depth knowledge of what’s actually happening in different parts of the university and the ability to compare and contrast practice. Finally, these reviews are the fastest way to really achieve change for students on the ground: not often does a student get to grill a Head of School on why they’re not delivering for students, with the full support of Alan Gilbert sat next to you!

Course Reps

My Union Link policy was passed by TLG on 9^th November, with rollout imminent. As of this week or next, I will be emailing all the course reps in five pilot schools asking them to apply to be a Union Link. This position is sort of a “Head Rep” role, to give better links between myself and the issues faced by each School, and requires monthly meetings with me (or a monthly report if unable to meet) in order to receive an honorarium. The University has agreed to fund this for the whole institution next year (to the tune of £4600) provided the pilot scheme shows real benefits to students, which I certainly hope it will!

General Representation

I have continued to represent the student voice on a number of committees:

TLG (Teaching & Learning Group) – passes academic policy before official seal at Senate. I have attended all these meetings (except for 9^th November when I was ill) and commented on various proposals, as well as drafting a Union Link proposal to take to 9^th November TLG. This motion was passed subject to minor amendments (see Course Reps section).

I also attended a special TLG which was for the purpose of Annual Monitoring – it summarised overarching themes from the OPRs and we gained an external perspective on certain issues. We also approved an action plan for central T&L activity for the coming year.

TLG subgroups – there are 5 working groups that I sit on which have been recently set up to look at various issues:

· Assessment & Feedback – looking at implementing a university-wide feedback policy, as well as a review of the marking system (e.g. should we mark in percentages or bands?)

o Myself and Gabriel organised two consultation sessions with students to feed into this group: the first was disappointingly attended and at time of writing I haven’t heard back from the second. I would like to stress that all of Council were given individual invites and chased up by phone (thanks Gabriel), taking up a lot of our time which could have been spent doing more representational issues. I hope Council took the opportunity to feed into a consultation on an issue continually raised as being high priority by the students they represent.

· Attendance Monitoring – looking at whether certain portions of courses should be compulsory and attendance monitored, and looking at implementing a university policy

· Credit Framework – looking at the structure of credits and how they build up into courses, with a view to making the credit framework more flexible

· Degree Regulations – how a final degree classification is awarded/calculated – level of flexibility to permit, as well as looking at the appropriateness of the current classification system

· Portfolio Review – looking at the appropriateness of the portfolio of degrees offered by the University

Faculty T&L Committees (4) – keep me updated on changes being made in each Faculty with regard to teaching and learning. I frequently suggest amendments to proposals and participate in discussions to ensure that the student voice is listened to. I also meet frequently with the Associate Deans for T&L (especially in EPS and Humanities) to give input on proposed changes or problems.

Student Services Centre Review Group – looking at how effective the SSC is currently and how it could be restructured to better meet students’ needs. I will be helping the university to run a survey of students in the next few weeks.

Learning Commons Core Group – looking at the design of the Learning Commons, the facilities within it and the space available for students. At this meeting it was determined that I would help organise a consultation with students on what they want the café to be like.

Unit Evaluation Questionnaire (UEQ) Working Group – looking at the current questionnaire given out at the end of a unit and trying to improve it. Currently looking at an online pilot and deciding on questions.

Audit report, governance and SUEI

I am on the SUEI steering group, and as such have devoted a fair amount of time to SUEI related things. I attended the 4.5 hour SUEI conference, where we developed a plan to take the scheme forward as there were concerns that the process had ground to a halt, and that the steering group were overburdened whilst other staff were completely disengaged from it. This was helped somewhat by a visit from our SUEI contact, who explained a bit more about it to staff and officers who had been uninvolved up to that point.

Governance-wise, I filled in Gabriel’s questionnaire about exec roles and was the only member of Council to attend the final consultation on the Strategic Plan (except Gabriel who hosted it). I assume it will be passed unanimously, as nobody offered comments or criticisms.

We have also received the audit report, which I spent a fair amount of time reading, as well as talking with exec about the findings and helping Gabriel to draft an exec proposal asking for a written response from management.

Internal relations – the university

Outside of formal committee structures, I have regular meetings with key university staff to stay updated on various issues and flag up concerns from the student body. Recently I have met with:

General Assembly – I was asked to give a presentation to General Assembly about the NSS, as well as issues affecting student satisfaction more generally. The presentation was well received and helped to highlight to stakeholders the problems students have with the university. The issue of poor quality teaching space was raised, as it has been in other meetings, and is an issue I will really be pushing over the coming months.

The President & Vice Chancellor – he meets with exec every 6 weeks or so. This time I brought up the lack of student representation on Professional & Support Services OPR, and this is being addressed. I also gave an update on the progress with student consultations on feedback.

Colin Stirling (VP T&L) – discussing OPRs and General Assembly presentation.

Humanities T&L Office staff – discussing an upcoming satisfaction survey they will be running and writing a preamble to said survey.

Karen Badat, Student Experience Office – regarding help promoting the NSS 2010. As a result of this meeting I drafted a proposal to exec about union support and active promotion of the NSS.

Jonathan Davies, Wireless Project Manager – invited me to sit on the university’s Wireless Project Board to give input on which university buildings should be prioritised for getting wireless access. The Students’ Union is number one priority (yay) and should be done by Christmas.

Other stuff

I held an open meeting with North Campus students, which although poorly attended was useful and I received good feedback from students to follow up on. I am considering making these meetings weekly, and will better publicise them.

I wrote a debate piece on the NUS Blueprint for Student Direct.

I scheduled in meetings between the President and students from each individual School: I will be attending the vast majority of these over the coming months.

I attended “Enhancing the Student Experience” conference in London, which was really interesting and useful, with lots of very high-profile (well, in the HE sector) speakers.

I visited the University of Aberdeen to talk to their Student Association President about their recent curriculum reform and the general feelings from students about the project. The University of Manchester are considering reforming the curriculum in a similar way, and this trip was extremely useful as we found out what was really going on, without the gloss and spin inevitably put on it by the University! (Please note, the University paid for my travel and food expenses, so no cost to the Union incurred).

I have received and responded to various individual student requests and queries, and am in the process of following up a few issues from the North Campus meeting I held.

Council Report 15th Oct-4th Nov 09

Council Report: 15th October-4th November 2009

Academic Affairs Officer

Get a comfy seat and a cup of tea, this will take a while!

OPRs
Operational Performance Reviews (OPRs) are annual, comprehensive reviews of performance. They last four hours each, and involve substantial amounts of pre-reading and preparation. There is one for each Faculty, as well as shorter ones for the Library, Professional Services and the Museum and Art Gallery.

At Faculty level, they’re an opportunity for the University’s Senior Management Team (the Vice Chancellor, Deputy VC and the Vice Presidents) to really get into the detail of faculties’ performance over the last academic year. This year, the focus has been on Teaching and Learning, with each School asked to produce a summary and an action plan of how they will improve the student experience over the coming year. As the student representative at these meetings, it’s been a great opportunity to raise issues of concern and ask questions of each Head of School. As well as reading the Schools’ and Faculties’ submissions, I also consulted course reps during their training and looked at NSS data and comments to make sure I had a decent overview of how things are in each School.

My questions and comments mostly focused on feedback – timing, quality, personalisation and availability. I also commented on issues surrounding academic support, staff training and attitude towards students, issues of identity and communication/consultation with students. It’s hugely beneficial to be able to ask these sorts of questions of Heads of School and Deans of Faculty while the Vice Chancellor is there to hear the answers, and notes are being taken to create a formal report of the meeting and its recommendations.

Following up from the OPRs, myself and Colin Stirling (VP Teaching & Learning) will be writing to individual Schools with a more comprehensive recommendation of how they should be improving student satisfaction. This should be a way of facilitating real change, and quickly: it’s very useful that the Union and University are on the same page!

Course Reps
For the whole of October myself and Charlotte (Union Training & Development Coordinator) have been training course reps on an individual School basis. We don’t have figures yet on how many we trained, but anecdotally it was more than last year! We will also be holding extra training sessions in November for any reps who were elected late or couldn’t attend previously. We’ve had positive feedback from most of the reps who said it was useful, as well as constructive criticism from postgrad reps (whose structures we don’t know a lot about). This feedback will affect the design of the course for next year.

I have been tweaking the Union Links proposal taken to exec in order to take it to TLG. I have organised speakers for five course rep events based around NSS themes, and will continue to plan these over the next few months. I collected feedback from course reps at training on what was good and bad about their School, as well as suggestions for improvement. I used this to back up my arguments in the OPRs.

Town Takeover

At the time of writing, Town Takeover is about to kick off and hopefully by the time you read this it will have gone well! Organising the stunt and debate for Town Takeovers has involved an immense amount of work by myself and the Campaigns Officer, in conjunction with NUS, Salford Union and MMUnion. I’ve been mostly responsible for organising the town hall debate, so getting a list of recommended speakers to NUS; visiting the venue and sorting out flyers, etc. I’ve also done a lot of online promotion for the event through Facebook and Twitter. Laura and I attended a meeting in Liverpool to hear their thoughts on how Liverpool’s TT went, which was useful. I invited lots of senior university officials to the debate, but they all declined. I have also painted a banner and a wall of debt, as well as making t-shirts for Laura’s stunt and filming a viral video.

The week after TT, there will be another debate in the students’ union. The Challenging Orthodoxies Society has booked the room, but I have been responsible for everything else to do with the event. At time of writing, I have confirmed Aaron Porter from NUS and Ed Maltby from the “Education Not For Sale” organisation. I have approached the CBI, 1994 Group and Russell Group but have had no luck getting a third speaker as yet.

Media Appearances
Related to Town Takeovers and the funding debate more broadly, I have made several media appearances talking about the issue. As well as giving Student Direct several quotes, a letter and a feature article (coming soon), I have appeared on Channel M, Radio Manchester Radio 5 and BBC Breakfast News. The BBC Breakfast appearance was a broader-based interview on the topic of quality and value for money in HE, with specific reference to the law school protests last year. The clips can be seen on my Facebook profile, if you want to check what I said!

General Representation
I have continued to represent the student voice on a number of committees:

Senate – largely a formalising process for me, as my regular meetings with Colin Stirling and involvement with other committees and OPRs mean I am largely up to date with what goes to Senate. Student reps on Senate are often called on by the VC to give an opinion on contentious proposals. From the next Senate, I will arrange a pre-meeting with the four other reps so that we are all on the same page: the only reason this was not done for 4th November was the short time between election of reps and the timing of the meeting.

TLG (Teaching & Learning Group) – passes academic policy before official seal at Senate. I have attended all these meetings and commented on various proposals, as well as drafting a Union Link proposal to take to 9th November TLG.

TLG subgroups – there are 5 working groups that I sit on which have been recently set up to look at various issues:
• Assessment & Feedback – looking at implementing a university-wide feedback policy, as well as a review of the marking system (e.g. should we mark in percentages or bands?)
• Attendance Monitoring – looking at whether certain portions of courses should be compulsory and attendance monitored, and looking at implementing a university policy
• Credit Framework – looking at the structure of credits and how they build up into courses, with a view to making the credit framework more flexible
• Degree Regulations – how a final degree classification is awarded/calculated – level of flexibility to permit, as well as looking at the appropriateness of the current classification system
• Portfolio Review – looking at the appropriateness of the portfolio of degrees offered by the University

Faculty T&L Committees (4) – keep me updated on changes being made in each Faculty with regard to teaching and learning. I frequently suggest amendments to proposals and participate in discussions to ensure that the student voice is listened to. I also meet frequently with the Associate Deans for T&L (especially in EPS and Humanities) to give input on proposed changes or problems.
Student Services Centre Review Group – looking at how effective the SSC is currently and how it could be restructured to better meet students’ needs.

Learning Commons Core Group – looking at the design of the Learning Commons, the facilities within it and the space available for students. I have had input on the technology to be available, as well as disabled access issues and more general design and layout.

Exchange Project Board – implementing the university’s new email system. I mostly just make sure everything’s going OK and I’ve had a play with the new Outlook Live platform. It also gives me chance to have words with the Director of IT Services, who called me when Blackboard went down recently to explain what was being done and how he was communicating with students.
Student Portal Advisory Group – I am the student rep on the board overseeing the Student Portal. So far I have raised issues of the Portal being down or slow, and given input on proposed changes and how they might be received by students.

University-Union Liaison Forum – formal meeting to go over the budget.


External relations – NUS and others
I attended NUS HE Zone Conference, where I attended several workshops on various HE issues including funding, league tables and “students as consumers”. This was useful and gave me more insight into the wider perspective that my work feeds into.

I organised and attended an Aldwych Group meeting here in Manchester. The Aldwych Group are the students’ unions of the Russell Group, so it’s useful to network with officers from similar unions to ourselves to share best practice. This session was on postgraduate engagement and was interesting.

Liaising with other unions was also a natural part of Town Takeovers, where we interacted with local students’ unions, Liverpool students’ unions and NUS.
Internal relations – the university
Outside of formal committee structures, I have regular meetings with key university staff to stay updated on various issues and flag up concerns from the student body. Recently I have met with:

Colin Stirling (VP T&L) – discussing OPRs, student satisfaction and concerns with various Schools. I also met with the Head of Materials and the Head of Medicine at two of these meetings.
Chris Davies (AD T&L Humanities) and Tony Brown (AD T&L EPS) to discuss concerns raised at TLCs as well as student satisfaction issues in their Faculty.

Jan Wilkinson (Director of JRUL) – discussed the refurbishment and its effect on students; computer cluster issues; provision of core texts and 24-hour opening. I also raised the issue of the Muriel Stott Graduate Centre, which I had received complaints about from students.
TLSO (Teaching & Learning Support Office) – I regularly meet with them to discuss course rep training and policy, as well as organising focus groups of students for various groups to consult.

Humanities New Academics Programme – not a person, but a course! I was asked to design and deliver a presentation to new academics in Humanities on 4th November on how to communicate with students and use their feedback to change/inform course delivery. It’s a great opportunity to really highlight the importance of student consultation and shows how good the relationship between the Union and particularly this Faculty is.

Winning, and beyond: next year's uphill struggle

Two weeks is a long time in politics, and much has changed since I posted my campaign video. I was very pleased to win the position of Academic Affairs Officer by 766 votes, with my 1900+ votes the highest of all executive candidates. Thanks to everyone who voted for me, postered for me and supported me, especially my unexpected campaign manager Chris Jenkinson.

It looks like I'll have my work cut out for me. A new report out today has shown that two thirds of university vice-chancellors want to raise the cap on fees, with one in ten wanting it completely removed so that they can charge what they want. These proposals would put students in unbelievable amounts of debt, whilst we are still in the middle of a recession and jobs are hard to come by. I am one of the first year group to have paid top-up fees and as such will graduate in a few months with £20,000 debt. Imagine how much more debt students in future years will have hanging like a millstone around their necks: if the average amount that the VCs want (£6,500) is enforced, including a maintenance loan of around £15,000 this takes debt up to £35,000 even without things like savings or overdrafts. That kind of investment could quite possibly never be paid off, and a lot of poorer students will simply not go to university.

I find it shocking that Charles Clarke can claim a victory on fees: he said that the government "won" the debate on fees because "only a few years afterwards there is very little criticism of [tuition fees]". How can this even be an argument when the tuition fee "guinea pigs" have yet to graduate? We simply do not know what the effects of top-up fees will be on this year's graduates when they leave. Let the experiment play through, Charles, before you proclaim it a success. Counting chickens, anyone?

I also reject the argument that tuition fees paid back when the graduate is working allows a contribution from those who have benefited from higher education. What about all the people (such as government ministers) who benefited from free higher education? If the new generation has to pay, why don't they? Higher education is a right, not a privilege, and shouldn't depend upon your parents' pay-packet or social class. Passing off more of the cost onto students so that they are crippled by debt before even starting their careers is not the answer. The only fair solution is for those who already benefit through higher wages to pay higher taxes: the Liberal Democrats' old(?) policy on a 50p tax rate on all earnings over £100,000 would be much fairer than imposing such a huge burden on students just starting out in life.

The University of Manchester says NO to increased tuition fees!
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=78455895589&ref=mf

Watch my campaign video!

Another brick in the wall...of debt

This article in Student Direct prompted me to re-read NUS's "Broke and Broken" report that I had flicked through at course rep conference. If I was in Manchester I would have added my £20,000 to the wall. According to the SD article, the average graduate debt is £17,500: as my year group are the first to graduate having paid £3,000 top-up fees, I imagine that this year's figure will be substantially higher. I work at a fairly highly-paid job (nearly £9 per hour) for 15 hours per week, and I am still precariously balanced near the bottom of my overdraft, so I can't fathom how anyone can afford NOT to work whilst doing their degree. Students who work have less time to devote to personal study or voluntary activities, therefore their degree classes and CVs often suffer simply because they have to finance their own education.

This isn't just about students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, although undeniably the current fee system has some effect on these students' decision to enter HE. Students whose parents earn just above the threshold to receive grants often receive no help from their family; similarly, those students whose families disagree with their decision to enter HE will often have no support from either family or government. Raising the cap on fees would only exacerbate problems like this.

Fundamentally, I disagree with the marketization of higher education. The best education should not be bought; it should be accessible on merit alone, else (as written in the NUS report) the class divides in this country will only become more exaggerated: the rich will get richer (and their children more likely to afford a better university), the poor and disadvantaged will have to settle for cheaper universities resulting in poorly paid jobs and will get poorer. Not only this, but the current idea of a "market" has failed abysmally: nearly all institutions charge the full whack for all their courses. Who's to say that raising the cap wouldn't simply result in all the Russell Group charging the top rate and pricing students from poorer backgrounds right out of the market?

It is sad that the current generation of students is being forced to consider higher education as some kind of marketable commodity. As seen at Cambridge, it is likely to cause a dearth of students taking certain "niche" subjects and the broad variety of subjects researched in the country will diminish. The more that is charged for a degree, the more students will hope to earn at the end of it, maning that some career paths such as academia or the public sector will become less popular and diminish in value.

Whichever way you look at it, subjecting education to the ravages of the free market strips it of its ontological value: there should be more to a degree than value for money and employability at the end of it. Education should be free and equally accessible to all, not contingent on how much you or your family can afford to spend.

I may add more tomorrow, but I am tired. This post, however, has to end with:

All in all, it's just another brick in the wall.

Conference, elections and appendices

I've been notably absent from the WWW for the past few weeks, firstly due to exams and then due to getting stuck into my dissertation reading. Finally I'm BACK and likely to be lingering for a while, due to circumstances beyond my control.

Last weekend was not only the much-reviled feast of St Valentine - for young liberals everywhere it was much more significant as the first Liberal Youth conference of 2009. Unfortunately, I was struck down with appendicitis after only attending a training session on the first night, so for the rest of the weekend and the first half of this week I was stuck in Warwick Hospital recovering from my emergency operation. Just my luck, eh? This also means that I've been forced to remain at my parents' house for two weeks in case someone bashes into me and opens the stitches, or something. Hence, boredom and increased online presence.

Due to my enforced regime of sleeping, throwing up and morphine, I had to very nicely ask Chris to submit my manifesto for me. There was no way I was missing out on a position I really want for the sake of a 5cm piece of intestine! So I'm now officially one of two candidates for UMSU Academic Affairs Officer 2009-10. I wrote a manifesto that I really believe in, and that I hope appeals to the average "normal" student and shows that I want to do the job to further students' education rather than polish my own political CV.

Also, re: the campaign: I hope it stays civilised. I don't want to be drawn into a slanging match and won't be baited: I'll stick with the issues I stand for as I think that they matter to students, and that a positive campaign on the issues is far more likely to benefit me and to engage more students in the voting process.

Discussion of my manifesto pledges to follow.

Revision burnout

So I got tired of revision today. I've been at it since before Christmas, and I'm certain that my performance in Friday's EC law exam does not demonstrate that to my satisfaction. I decided to give myself a quick break (that didn't involve sleeping, despite my ever-present fatigue) and write some rubbish about what to do when these exams are over.

First of all, I've got to write a manifesto. Having read Chris's the idea scares me as I'm not very good at self-promotion. I've got a few things I stand for, but writing them down and making it so LONG is the hard part! Definitely won't be doing that yet as my brain hurts :(

Second (and much less important): I have grown bored of my hair again and wish to be a platinum blonde. Yes, drastic I know, but I've never done it and some people make it look amazing. So, here's the idea:


+

=

Unfortunately, dyed black hair is the hardest to turn blonde - you go ginger :( so I need to see a hairdresser rather than order Manic Panic bleach off the internet like I'd like to. Boooo.

Hmm, what else..oh yes, I have plans for two more tattoos: a triquetra on my right wrist to balance out the symbol on my left; and an ouroboros (that looks like Snakey!) on the back of my neck.

A quick timetable, then:
February: Write manifesto, enter nominations, begin campaign. Come up with dissertation proposal and start reading. Attend lectures and seminars. Attend LY conference on 13th.
March: Campaign in earnest. Elections. Write dissertation outline. Turn 21. Go to Holland on 19th. Plan and begin reading for politics essay.
April: Go to San Francisco on 6th. Write politics essay. Apply for jobs for next year if campaign unsuccessful. Write dissertation. Revise for exams.
May: Take exams. Finalise and hand in dissertation. Hand in notice if campaign successful. Continue applying for jobs if not.

Fun times. Oh well, at least Holland and San Francisco will be amusante! Here's a picture of the type of room in the hotel we're going to (in Nob Hill, hee hee):