Alison reflected that her time as Education Officer has been ‘challenging’.
She said: “I think you go in very naïve. You slowly learn all the different structures, and then you spend time trying to unlearn them and go back to what you were thinking at the start and trying to implement that. It’s been challenging and my confidence has increased.
“The University works at, maybe, a five year time scale, you’re working on a one year time scale, so how do you make it effective for future students to still make change. You can set up relationships or structures that will support a future officer. Their name might be on something really successful – fine, but you might have done all of the groundwork – also fine.
“I don’t care about that, it’s just about making sure the SU is the best for students. Being a custodian of that is a huge, huge privilege.”
She addressed her initial policies:
Collaboration with national SUs to lobby for accessible education, increasing government funding and reinstating funding grants:“There’s Russell Group collective that’s been established and Liam’s heavily involved in that, and from the maintenance loan side, I’m currently working in that space. It’s a really effective space to mirror the Russell Group universities in terms of lobbying power. We’re also talking a lot to northern SUs. I would love this for the next officer team, that we’re establishing connections here and how powerful the north could be.
“This is also a next government thing, which is why a lot of the work you do is to set it up for the next people. Maintenance loans for example – I believe in free, fair, totally funded education, which is gone. Right now, our government wouldn’t do that, but a future one may.”
Ensure fair assessments and retain online assessment choice: “It’s something we say so much in meetings – what are the learnings of Covid? We know the adjustments through Covid increased inclusivity to assessment, it made assessment more equitable, let’s keep it in.
“That’s easy for us to say, but that takes a lot and often gets stuck in committees – the University is like, ‘oh let’s set up a committee for that’, which we have done, it’s a space where officers and students can discuss how to make education as inclusive as possible, which would include diverse forms of assessment, online assessment options. There are departments that do it in pilot ways, but in terms of putting a policy for that across the University, that has to happen in that committee.
“The University hasn’t promised to back to all online stuff but we are still justifying the case of why.”
Champion decolonised and sustainable education through teach-outs: “There was a teach-out. It’s called Inside Out: Reimagining Education, which I hope the SU can continue as a series that we do all the time, I think the SU should be a place of knowledge exchange and alternative ways of learning.
“We had teach-outs last round of strikes and this semester, we got some more booked.”
“On 15 February there’s a solidarity teach-out, with the aim of getting all our students and staff together and there’ll be speakers talking about what solidarity means in today’s society, and hopefully making a bit more of a colourful campus on a strike day.”
Strike compensation: “To get compensation, students have to complain, but it’s a really disempowering process, it’s very long, and it’s such a funny conversation with the Uni when we say, ‘you need to improve your system so we can complain against you easier’, that’s an interesting conversation.
“It’s so hard to change a system; there’s comms to tell students to use it, but also we need to make it easier, and that’s something we’re doing now, there should be comms on our Instagram soon, and keep your eyes peeled for a student generated campaign that focuses on this sort of thing.”
Ensuring lost wages from strikes are used to fund student services: “Me and Anna went to the top and asked the Uni where’s that money? And the answer was very opaque. So we went to each faculty, and they all give different answers – some departments have a student fund, where money docked from striking staff wages is put in and students can decide where it goes, but there’s no transparency across the institution of that.
“So, it’s talking to academic reps and students and telling them, you can ask these questions to your department, there are funds here, ask about it and be involved in where that money goes.”
Empowering student justice through collective complaint support: “Which we are trying to do. We just need to put our comms out for that. We have our SU forums: If you’ve lost learning opportunities during strikes, come to our forum and we’ll help you through the complaints process. We haven’t done that yet [this time] because students can’t start that process until the strikes are over. So that stuff will happen after industrial action, or even the end of the year, which I know is disempowering for students, it just can’t be done earlier.”
Cost of living: “The Uni increased their Financial Support Fund to £3m, which is significant and better than most universities, and any student can access that. If you’re experiencing the cost of living, you can apply to the fund and you should get support.”
Collaborate with a national movement for demarketisation: “A policy that’s coming in to our next council is called Fund the Arts, and one of the victims of marketisation of education is arts subjects, and they’re devalued, we’re told they don’t have as much market value. So this policy we’re putting through ensures officers of future teams makes sure all arts disciplines have funding kept and more departments aren’t closed because of the pressures of marketisation.
“In terms of collaborating with other SUs, not so much – the Russell Group collective is very much on the cost of living, but I think it’s a space other problems can be undone.”