Last week, the Sabbs attended the annual NUS Lead and Change Conference. Find out what went down!
Sharanya Sivarajah
President
What is NUS?
The National Union of Students (NUS) represents millions of students at a national level on a number of different matters relating to your education. NUS promotes, defends and extends student rights through utilising their collective power, and aims to combat injustices and campaign for better treatment of all students. They do this by bringing together a network of sabbatical officers across the UK and developing research that influences national policy.
What is Lead and Change?
The purpose of the Lead and Change Conference is to develop key skills that sabbatical officers need to succeed during their time in office, to learn more about current and long-term issues that matter most to students, and to build networks that will help us thrive during our year in office. With our Officer team comprising three new officers (Madelaine, Olivia and Bana) and one returning officer (myself, Sharanya), we were able to split into groups to focus on different aspects of our roles.
Throughout the week, we attended various skills development and networking sessions, as well as workshops focusing on key student issues.
Meeting Other Sabbatical Officers
Our first few sessions were filled with icebreakers, introductions, and networking. Networking is a vital element of being a Sabb as it helps us build stronger connections across students’ unions and officers across the country, maximising our power to drive change. These sessions gave us the opportunity to connect with fellow officers and discuss matters relevant to our roles such as student wellbeing, supporting liberation groups, education, and empowering student societies. It was incredibly rewarding to have a guided discussion with like-minded individuals; we shared our aspirations for the year, our main manifesto points, and identified potential collaborations or points for further discussion. The conversations were insightful, and it was interesting to hear how other officers were tackling similar problems at their universities. Common topics included the student housing crisis, cost of living, mental health, commuter and international student support, making education more accessible, and spearheading strategies to increase engagement among students. We can't wait to build on the ideas shared in the session and hopefully continue brainstorming with other officers throughout the year.
Campaign Workshops
The Sabbs also attended campaign workshops on different issues students are facing today, including Opportunities to Influence: Shaping and Using Regulations and Policy and Cutting Through the Noise: How to Influence National Politics After the General Election.
Opportunities to Influence looked at how successful campaigns can create pressure to push for what we want. We thought about how to leverage existing pressure from rules and regulations placed on our universities in our campaigns, and how can we shape our work strategically to give students and SUs more power.
The General Election session looked at how the first 100 days of any government are a race between every single lobbying group to get their issues on the table. Through the power of students’ unions' relationships with MPs, we learnt how NUS UK is uniquely placed to build power and get student issues on the agenda. We also looked at how national and local decisions are made, and how every single SU can use their influence to make life better for students around the country.
Final thoughts
The week was a great opportunity to connect with other Sabbs across the country from a range of different SUs. We enjoyed sharing our manifesto ideas and seeing how they compared to other people’s aims for the year. We can’t wait to build on the network of sabbatical officers to lobby for the national change that our student movement is fighting for.
