A Responsive Education Sector Needs a Representative and Relevant NUS
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008One of the key planks of my manifesto centres around making NUS - and the student movement at large - more representative and relevant to our increasingly diverse membership.
The NUS Liberation Campaigns, and more importantly liberation groups in colleges and campuses up and down the UK, do an outstanding job at ensuring that students from communities at the forefront of discrimination and prejudice are well represented and well equipped to facing those challenges head on. Just look at the latest initiative from the Disabled Students’ Campaign - ‘A Day in the Life’, highlighting the real life experiences of disabled students and how many and varied they are.
There are groups that remain consistently under-represented however: part-time students, mature students, international students and postgraduates. Although provision exists for these students within NUS’ structures they are relatively under-resourced, but absolutely vital if NUS and students’ unions are going to have any credibility moving forward. I am pleased that the NUS Governance Review goes some way to addressing these problems, creating a full-time international students’ officer and dedicated representation for part-time and mature students on the new Senate.
Much more needs to be done and I will be outlining some more of my ideas in the run-up to Annual Conference, but for now I just wanted to highlight a speech I delivered to the iGraduate Conference in Edinburgh last Friday. It focuses on the need for a responsive HE sector, but specifically examines the challenges facing international students.
Let me know what you think!
Wes