Education Officer Blog

Congratulations you've made it to the end of the Semester 1 examination period!! I'm incredibly proud of all the hard work you've been doing and you should be proud of yourselves! Make sure you take some time during inter semester break to relax and recharge.

This week started slightly differently to usual, here’s a quick overview of some of the things I have been working on:

CEO Interviews

As you may know, in December our CEO left. This has meant that over the last few months the recruitment process begun as the search for our next CEO started. I had the opportunity to support the recruitment process by sitting on an interview panel with Tom, Freya and Jordan (Trustee). This is another one of the cool opportunities this job offers! There were some incredibly strong candidates’ and after two days of interviews we had created a shortlist. The next stage of interviews is next week which I will also get to be a part of.

Exam errors and feedback

Over the last two weeks you have had your semester 1 exams, I’m aware that for many of you, you felt the exams took a lot longer than the recommended allocated time. I have brought this to the attention of the Pro-Vice Chancellor and the Associate Deans. I will make sure that this remains a hot topic of conversation during the planning of semester 2 exams. We will be carrying out an engagement activity over the next week to see where there were errors in exams and collect your feedback. You can also raise your concerns with your Director of Studies or let your Academic Reps know.

Resilient Curriculum / No Detriment

Resilient Curriculum this week had several different focuses from discussing the latest Office for Students Regulation, scenario planning for semester 2 and next academic year and looking at the future of exams. I raised here how important it is for the university to swiftly look at the attainment of semester 1 exams and assessments to make sure that the No Detriment mitigation has been effective and that no particular group of students had been unduly affected. Francesco and I will remain in conversations with the university about this and it will remain a high priority of ours throughout the rest of the academic year. The university has said they will remain open to conversations around No Detriment measures, whilst monitoring what is happening across the sector, as the semester continues.

Placements

I also attended a Placement Resilience group. We spoke about some of the key issues that had arisen since we left the EU, including visa complication and how this may impact the opportunities students wanting to study or work abroad next year have. Alongside the additional challenges covid is presenting with many placement students also working from home. Over the next few weeks, we will be doing an engagement activity with students on placement to see how as an SU we can further support you. In the meantime if you are on placement or are looking to go on placement next year and need support please do contact our SU Advice and Support team. 

SU Strategy

I also worked with the rest of the Officer Team on our strategy looking at our key performance indicators and how we can continue to improve the Students’ Union so you can get the most out of it and how we can utilise the space we have better.

National Union of Students (NUS) Conference Delegates Meeting

The NUS Conference Delegates and Liberation Delegates met to start brain storming ideas over what policies we would like to propose to be discussed at the next national conferences. These ranged from a variety of issues such as international mobility, mental health, tuition fee refunds, lecture capture and postgraduate concerns. Over the next few weeks we will be discussing these further as we decide which two to put forward. If you would be interested in being a NUS delegate by-elections open on the 26^th January and can be found here.

As always, if there are any emerging issues that you would like to raise please do contact me at sueducation@bath.ac.uk.

Stay safe and enjoy ISB x