Update from your Sabbatical officers!

Update from your Sabbatical officers!

Earlier on this year, at the National Union of Students National Conference (an event for all Students’ Unions to pass policies and NUS priorities for the year) a motion was passed for the NUS to support a boycott or sabotage of the NSS (National Student Survey we take in our final year). This is due to it being a metric for the TEF (Teaching Excellent Framework) and similar new government policies allowing Universities to increase tuition fees according to their rating of teaching quality.  

After talking about this as a Sabb team, we decided that we do not wish to sabotage or boycott the NSS. As a small Students’ Union who has a good relationship with our University, we agreed that it would be too much of a risk and could have detrimental effects on improving our student experience at Solent.

Since then, we teamed up with 35 other SUs to push for a national ballot. This means that the NUS must open a consultation and allow for all SUs affiliated with the NUS to vote. SUs will vote on whether the NUS should be supporting the sabotage/boycott, or if they should research and risk assess the effects first.

We’ve taken the action because we feel that smaller Students’ Unions like ours, and YOU deserve to be considered when actions like this are taken – we will not get involved with a boycott/sabotage without knowing the potential impact. We will continue to take action according to what we feel will best benefit our student community now and in the future.

More info on the National ballot can be found here: http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/articles/chief-returning-officer-cro-opens-consultation-on-proposed-question

If you have any questions for your sabbatical officers, or would like to share any feedback on the issue please contact your SU president at su.president@solent.ac.uk