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NUS Membership: Further Education

 

 

 

Being part of a National student voice – NUS Membership 

 

Impact 

 

With 95% of all students’ unions in membership of NUS and almost 100 years of experience representing students, NUS is the best and only route to guarantee that you and your students will be represented on the national stage.  

 

As a member, you directly control what we work on through our Participatory Democracy. You identify issues, solutions, and you set our priorities. Being part of NUS’s democracy also offers your students opportunities for personal growth – people who take part often find the experience educational and sometimes even life-changing.   

 

The main impact we bring is making change for students. You can choose to be actively involved in change-making or to simply feel the effect of the change-making. Either way, you can be assured that your students are safer, happier, better off, and receiving a better education because of your membership of NUS.   

 

Specifically, we ensure:  

 

  • high-impact priority campaigns shaped by you and running across the UK including specifically targeted work in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland  

 

  • Collective national representation in the media, governments of all four nations, and education sector on key matters  

 

  • Have election clout through nationally coordinated election activity and access to exclusive resources for voter registration and GOTV  

  

Value  

 

No student or students’ union could individually influence the national stage alone. But by working together as a collective, the value of being a member of NUS is so vast that it is almost immeasurable. Every year NUS wins on issues that put £ millions back into education and directly into students’ pockets. For an individual student, the personal value could be anything from being £000s better off each month to having access to courses, support, and services that wouldn’t have been possible without NUSs’ work. We have a press & media reach averaging over 50m people per month and in peak moments NUS will reach upwards of 160m a week. This visibility is highly valuable and can only be achieved by working as a collective.  

 

Each year we publish an impact and value report, so you can see exactly the value we brought to your students’ union and impact on your students in the previous year.   

Our 2021-22 plan of work is available here.  

Our 2020-21 impact and value report is available here. 

 

A few historical and recent wins for Further Education... 

 

  • In 1970, when South African people were governed under apartheid, students were at the forefront of resistance. NUS collaborated with South African Student Organisation and organised a student boycott of Barclay’s bank until it cut its ties with the regime – an economic boycott which is widely credited with being hugely influential in the end of apartheid. 

 

  • We went against the current of public opinion to become the first ever organisation in the UK to pass policy in favour of gay rights – a couple of years before even the events of the film Pride! 

 

  • We don’t leave anyone behind: we took the government to court to prove that they had wrongfully deported 48,000 international students – and won. 

 

  • We’ve changed the face of politics wherever we go – but in particular, through the founding of NUS-USI in 1972, under a unique arrangement where both the British and Irish national student unions jointly organised in Northern Ireland to promote student unity across the divide. 

 

  • We got student railcards introduced and then extended to 16–17-year-olds   

 

  • We’ve conducted ground-breaking research into Sexual Violence in Further Education, and put lad culture and zero tolerance on the agenda in institutions all over the country    

 

  • We set up the amazing National Society of Apprentices, representing over 150,000 apprentices from across all sectors and industries, across the whole of the UK.  

 

  • We got £100 million put into student bursaries in colleges in 2015   

 

  • We lifted the age cap on Level 3 funding for most courses – over 19s can now do their first one for free!

 

  • Votes at 16 We believe that voting for elected representatives is a fundamental right in a democratic society, and one that should be extended to 16 and 17-year-olds. The ‘Votes at 16’ campaign has already been successfully implemented for elections in local authorities and the devolved parliament in Scotland, and thanks to our campaigning and lobbying, the Welsh Government recently announced plans to lower the voting age in local elections to 16. 

 

  • There is now a fundamental inequity of rights in this country: with the ability to vote decided by a ‘postcode lottery’. This situation is both morally and politically unsustainable for the government, and with the support of opposition parties, we have a real opportunity to lower the voting age across all UK elections. 

 

  • We continue to work alongside bodies such as the Association of Colleges (AoC) and the British Youth Council (BYC) to support this campaign. 

 

Campaigning for Further Education 20/21 and beyond

 

  • More recently, we’ve won Justice for Education during the summer of 2020. The government caused chaos in grading students’ A Levels and GCSEs. We fought back demanding that discriminatory grading algorithms be scrapped, exams be cancelled, and all students be awarded by centre assessed grades.

While the exams fiasco resulted in victory (because of the amazing work of students across the country who have campaigned, told their story, lobbied the government, and took to the streets in the face of a discriminatory grading system), this must go further. We need a complete overhaul of our system around exams & grading, and, in its place, we need investment into our education, our teachers, our students, and our resources to end educational injustice once and for all. 

 

  • We’ve lobbied the government around the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. We’re influencing the shaping of the ‘lifelong learning loan’ and the ‘lifetime skills guarentee’ to support adult learners in FE, a significant step closer towards NUS’ demand for an education system that is truly lifelong, accessible and funded.

Our demands for the Bill include maintenance support funding available to all FE learners; investment and enhancement to digital accessibility through funding and infrastructure; clear strategy for blended learning; and boosting student voice and representation within FE institutions.

 

  • We’ve joined the coalition campaign to #ProtectStudentChoice, fighting against the defunding of BTECs in favour of T-Levels. And the government have just conceded to delay this for one year – giving us more time to develop an evidence-based campaign.