Hello lovely people! In what will be my LAST EVER blog post (which I can hear an active sigh of release about – who else blogs THIS MUCH?), I’m gonna try to round up the past two years across the good, the bad, and the ugly.
THE GOOD
The Good is everything that makes me jump for joy, makes me think “what even is my job”, and is also often focused on you, our students.
Two terms means two Education Awards, and it definitely gets better with time – I wouldn’t say EASIER because we decided to change basically everything, but I definitely had a better grasp on what people need, do, and ask about. Moving to the Guildhall was a super well received move, and I even got my first Education Award!
If you have followed either of my campaigns, you know both were centred around my own (not so niche) interest of inclusive education – and between presenting a paper about the issues around DAPs to Education Advisory Board, the glorious work of Kate Awdry and other unsung heros alike, and of course, input from you, our students we now have a fully fledged set of working groups breaking down issues around DAPs, learning & teaching, assessment, IMCs, and more!
Not only that, we are also seeing great strides for the accessibility of campus – with the accessibility committee I have been on since final year finally getting a yearly budget!
As well as championing disability awareness within the education -sphere-, a true point of joy has been how disabilities are now considered at awards ceremonies – including graduations!
My guides for disabled/neurodiverse and trans students currently lurk on the blog, but also have made it on to the news in ten, so I hope they help someone this (hopefully sunny!) summer graduation season.
The trans guide specifically has been a super collaboration, taking insight from our LGBT+ society and the amazingly hard work of registry to ensure that students feel comfortable, knowledgeable, and know where to go if they have anything extra to ask!
- All the Academic Rep Resources
Part of handover has been trying to dump everything I have learnt into one concise place, and luckily, my plain English guides have proved to be a great outsource – thanks past Amber!
They’ve covered who/what an academic advisor is, AI, IMCs, appeals, and more, and they’re all squirreled away here on the blog to be referred to with ease. Not only this, but there is the absolute labour of love that is the IMC phrasebank – something that took me longer than I’d like to admit, but serves as a super well received first point for y’all fighting against the crush of three days to get your claim in!
At the end of our first year as officers, we pooled our officer budget to feed y’all with the SU pantry, and hundreds of you turned up. Now, we have a community organiser (read – a student who helps run our pantry!), funding from the Uni, and continue to help out any and all of y’all getting through the cost of living crisis. It seems so strange that something that started in a store cupboard now has its own dedicated space and staff member – but it also speaks to the true change that a team can make.
- Speaking at conferences, focus groups, and more!
Part of being a certified Education Nerd means that you get to sometimes Professionally Nerd Out – and this means I have reached a whole lot of corners of the internet – writing two Wonkhe blogs on the issues with award season and oversharing as an officer, but also speaking at conferences about Action and Participation Plans for UUK, Lifelong Learning Entitlement for the QAA (using the example of my dream business – Cradlez), and on survey saturation at the Festival Of Higher Education. I’ve also been in big ol’ focus groups for the Department for Education waxing lyrical on widening participation and access, and AI policies. We’ve even roped y’all in during elections week to meet John Blake and talk about what widening participation means to you.
This past few years, I’ve managed to go on international trips, back to the North, to Buckingham Palace (!!!), seen a SUmmit rework, bugged y’all for Together We Shape Tomorrow, and even scraped together a University Challenge team (twice). Theres so much to cover, and frankly, I’m impressed you got this far into the blogpost.
THE BAD(ISH)
The Bad(ish) focuses on stuff that was, to be frank, Quite Bad, but had a light at the end of the tunnel – this is where your voices have truly shined and made a difference.
The bursary cuts were an absolute blow – one of the main reasons I came to Bath was that, as a widening participation dream, the bursaries were something I knew would tide me through. The bursary helped me afford when rent overlapped during placement, working two simultaneous placements while relying solely on student finance, put down deposits for renting, and have overall, repeatedly, saved me from accruing massive amounts of debt or having to work long hours, like many students have to.
BULU launched a campaign to build back bursaries, and the impact was felt – this student voice alongside the charm and sheer ingenuity of the Gold Scholarships team (with an extra focus on Liz Simmons!) birthed the Claverton Scholarship – which boosts the sheer amount of money students receive, alongside giving them amazing opportunities for social capital and a skills passport that I wish I’d had access to.
I was coming back from a graduation, and my phone was ringing off the hook when I found out about the Econ Exam. If you missed it (somehow), this BBC reported incident was when an Economics exam had its mark scheme printed alongside it, and saw hundreds of students having to repeat it.
With the Economics exam, student input helped us at the SU build a case so that we could secure
- Extra examination dates
- IMC help and guidance
- Alternative assessments for exchange students
- Escalation of the issue to Pro Vice Chancellor Education and the Vice Chancellor
- New guidance for exam printing, and invigilator training for misprints
While this didn’t save the first year Physics exam (working on it, I swear) – it was so stellar to see such a range of support come out for students, and the rate of change was the best I’ve seen.
THE UGLY
The Ugly is just everything that is a Terror – the silver lining here is that there may be lessons learnt, but it doesn’t have the same pull or turn around in the Bad.
The one true terror of this whole time has been what I came in on – the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB). Half of our officer team skated through the first half of their year with no degree thanks to its impact, we had to include a nod to it in our inaugural graduation speeches, and as Education Officer, people were demanding answers from day 0 (to be generous).
MAB eventually came to an end, and (ratified by student votes), the SU continues to support UCU action on strikes – but it was heartbreaking to see so many students feel so amazingly disheartened and hopeless, even if for most it worked out in the end.