Friday 11-08-2023 - 11:02

This year has been one of significant growth and change for SMSU, as we work towards the goals in our three year strategy.

At the start of the year, we launched a new student advice service, in line with our strategic priority to support student wellbeing. Our advice service represents a big step up in the support we can offer students. This year, our student advisor has supported students with over 125 cases, providing confidential, impartial and professional advice and support. In many instances the input of our student advisor has helped students remain on their courses. The introduction of the advice service also freed up time within my own role, giving me more time to campaign for change on behalf of our students.

In September, we welcomed a new cohort of over 300 course reps. Our course reps benefitted from improved training, led by our newly recruited student voice coordinator. Our training was re-designed to give reps the skills they need to collect balanced and representative feedback, present this feedback effectively to programme teams, and finally report back to their cohort of students.

This year we also introduced the paid “Subject Chair” role. Subject chairs act as senior academic representatives for their faculty, supporting their course reps and building a bigger picture within the faculty by collating feedback from across courses.

At the start of October, I ran our Dyslexia Awareness Week campaign. Students and staff joined us in wearing red to raise awareness of dyslexia and we shared advice and guidance through our social media channels. We also ran a well-attended focus group, to listen to students with dyslexia and better understand their experiences at St Mary’s.

This report uncovered significant issues with the support provided to dyslexic students at St Mary’s and shone a light on the additional challenges these students face to succeed on their course. The report was presented to a range of senior committees at the university, and we continue to use it when providing feedback on university policies.

In November 2022, we ran our first ever “SIMMIE safety week”. We spent the week engaging with students, raising awareness of available support and collecting feedback from students on campus safety and sexual misconduct. We conducted a survey during the week, with 404 students responding.

We used the survey data to create our “SIMMIE safety report”, our first ever report into student safety and sexual misconduct. The data from the report has helped us campaign on my manifesto point for zero-tolerance to sexual harassment and sexual assault. We have already secured improvements to the “report and support” system, and we continue to lobby for improvements to communications, staff and student training and security provision.

We have also built relationships with external partners during the year to raise awareness of these issues, give students the opportunity to access support and build students’ confidence in coming forward. In February 2023 we piloted healthy relationships training with the Alice Ruggles trust and later on in the year we ran a stalking drop-in session with both the trust and specialist officers from the Metropolitan Police.

At the end of January 2023, I submitted our first ever Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) submission to the Higher Education regulator, the Office for Students. This was a considerable piece of work which gave us a unique and valuable opportunity to put student voice at the heart of the university’s progression. Vital to our TEF submission was the feedback from our new “Big Rep” meetings. Introduced at the start of the academic year, these meetings bring course reps together from across the university to discuss university-wide issues. Topics discussed at Big Rep meetings this year have included personal tutoring, the library, the new student app and the cost of living.

In January I also launched our Online Lecture Capture survey. I used the data collected to put forward a case for an “opt-out” policy where lectures are recorded by default, the implementation of which is one of my manifesto points. This proposal was recently approved by the university’s academic board, making this change official university policy. A final policy is expected by Autumn 2023.

In March, I attended the National Union of Students (NUS) national conference alongside Mehakdeep, our elected NUS delegate. NUS conference brings SU presidents and elected delegates from across the UK together to discuss national issues affecting students. The five areas discussed this year were the cost of living, education, international student support, housing and NUS democracy. We learnt a lot from the conference, particularly on the Cost of Living, with discussions with other SUs helping us create the “write to your MP” campaign we launched in May.

Finally, In May I spent time promoting our “Big Student Survey”. The data we’ve collected will feed into my upcoming cost of living report and will also help guide the implementation of our three-year strategy, ensuring we provide maximum value for our students. Looking forward, we have another year of significant growth and development ahead. The whole SU team and I will continue to work hard to build an SU which is more inclusive, representative and effective than ever before.