5.1 The Partnership Agreement

5.2.1 Course Representatives
Course representatives are chosen by their course mates and coordinated by their School. They act at School level and attend Staff: Student Committees (see appendix W for a full description of the course representative system).

5.2.2 Union Academic Representatives (UARs)
UARs are student representatives coordinated by LUU, who act at Faculty level. They are elected by students in their faculty at each level of study; undergraduate, taught postgraduate and research postgraduate (see appendix W for a full description of the UAR system).

5.2.3 LUU Student Executive
Students are represented by 6 full-time elected sabbatical officers in the areas of Welfare, Education, Equality and Diversity, Community, Student Activities and Internal Affairs and Communication. Executive members represent students’ interests on various local and University committees, including the Learning and Teaching and Graduate Boards. They are supported by permanent LUU staff.

LUU has a Democracy Support Team (DST) dedicated to providing support to student representatives. DST have identified the following strengths and weaknesses in the Course Rep and UAR systems:

5.3.1 Course Representatives
In 2006/7 30% of course reps attended training run by LUU. LUU’s target for 2007/8 is to train at least 40% of reps. LUU’s suggestions for making the course rep system more effective include:

• More timely communication from Schools regarding course reps appointed Schools are responsible for putting course reps in place, and there is an agreement that details of course reps appointed will be made available to LUU by October. Course reps can then be given the option to participate in training run by LUU. Information received from Schools however is patchy; some provide long lists of reps and others do not provide any names at all. Appendix V shows the information LUU currently holds for course representatives acting in 2007/08.

• Neither Union nor University have in place suitable resources or structures to monitor the impact or quality of course reps. Course reps’ attendance at staff student committees is not monitored and at present LUU has no way of knowing which course reps are most proactive. LUU feels there is a need for the Union and University to consider a formal course representative agreement that clearly defines the responsibility of University, Union and course reps, and to investigate what format could be effective and sustainable for measuring the effectiveness of course reps activity.

• There may be value in Union and University considering how the skills and experience of course reps could be formally evaluated in order to record skills and competencies attained and/or demonstrated by course reps. This could be valuable for course reps in seeking future employment and could make the responsibility of being a course rep more attractive to students.

• In an effort to raise the profile of course reps within the student population, LUU is publishing a list of course reps online, but this needs to be marketed more effectively if course reps are to act as effective points of contact for students raising issues about their course.

5.3.2 UARs
The Democracy Support Team cite a number of recent positive developments to the UAR system:

• The UAR system is centrally backed by the University. Both the Graduate Board and the Learning and Teaching Board are supportive. The relationship between LUU and AQST, who administer Faculty Learning and Teaching Committees (FLTCs), means it is possible for LUU to receive papers in advance of FLTC meetings and review these with UARs. AQST are also involved in the training of taught UARs and contributed to the 2006/07 Dusties awards for active student representatives.

• The relationship between the UARs and LUU’s Education Officer is developing. The Education Officer uses the UARs to help with lobbying the university and to carry out research. This relationship is expected to develop further in the 2007/08 academic year as the current Education Officer was a UAR in 2006/07.

• The Democracy Support Team say of the UAR system:

“This year the UAR’s and course reps will play a bigger role in assisting the Education Officer in research and campaign work. The Education Officer with the help of the Democracy Support Team have outlined contracts for the reps detailing what tasks and commitments they have to fulfill (see attached contract)".

The representatives are an invaluable source of support for the Education Officer who can be inhibited by difficulties gaining a true reflection of the situation for students on the ground. By having active networks of students the officer can ensure that they are truly consulting and responding to the issues that concern students, but also that their opinions play a major role in the way the officer handles an issue presented to them.

Last year we provided course reps with training and asked the UARs to mentor 10 course representatives in each of their faculties, and to stay in regular contact with the rest. However we didn’t provide them with any information or issues through which they could stay in touch therefore whilst the UAR’s were good at attending meetings and responding to the papers presented at FLTC’s they weren’t so good at keeping regular contact with the course representatives who sit on the Staff: Student Forums. This year we have sought to use the course representatives and Union Academic Representatives to strengthen the Education Officers awareness on key issues that have been highlighted in the University’s Programme Survey e.g. feedback and personal tutoring. We have done this through termly ‘missions’ broken down into a series of fortnightly set tasks through which each UAR asks their Course Representatives to carry out a small amount of research e.g. asking a personal tutor 5 questions which are then relayed back to the UAR who analyses the results from across the faculty. The different forms of research are then complied into a report or presentation for the Education Officer. This should also help build better communication between the representatives and generally raise the profile of the representative systems.”

• A number of the taught UARs in 2007/8 were previously Course Reps and the LUU Education Officer was previously an undergraduate UAR. This indicates those students find the representation systems in place effective and that they feel they are achieving something through these. It also gives some continuity to reps and allows them to share their experience with new reps.

• For the 2007/08 academic year all UARs will be set key performance indicators to enable LUU to better review how effective individual UARs and the scheme are.

• The new secure online voting system introduced by LUU in 2006/7 made the UAR elections held at the end of that academic year much more effective. Voter turnout per faculty was also increased from a couple of votes in previous years to just over 60. LUU also now has the ability to send emails to all students. These can be broken down to level of study and faculty, meaning that UARs can send an email (via the Democracy Support Team) to all the students they represent.

Areas in need of further development include:

• Faculty support for UARs, which is varied. Although the scheme is backed centrally, there have been cases where a faculty has been reluctant to help LUU recruit UARs. Faculty support will become even more important as the UARs undertake projects investigating some of the principle issues of concern identified in the NSS and Student Experience Surveys.

• All taught UARs are contracted to mentor five Course Reps. However some UARs have difficulty engaging course reps.

• Papers for Faculty Gradauate School Committee meetings (attended by research UARs) are distributed by individual faculties. This makes it difficult to get papers in advance, with some arriving after the meeting and some not at all. The Graduate Board has agreed that in the 2007/08 academic year all faculties send FGSC papers to LUU in advance of the meeting. It is hoped that this will work in practice.

• Raising the profile and establishing the presence of UARs at local level may be achieved if they were included in, for example, student handbooks and referred to in induction processes.

The question of whether students feel they have a voice in the institution is not addressed by any of the existing student surveys considered here. In order to canvass student opinion, LUU emailed a questionnaire to newly appointed UARs and Union Council representatives. The responses are collated below.

Table XXII: Responses to UAR survey



The number of respondents is small and therefore can only provide a snapshot of individuals’ opinions. It is interesting to note however some of the recurring points; such as the feeling that though students do have a voice it is largely unheard or unused.

Student surveys are becoming an increasingly used means of gathering student opinion. As well as national and institution-wide surveys, students complete end-of-module surveys to provide more detailed, local information.

While the experiences of UARs summarized above are too few to be representative, they do perhaps highlight the fact that student representation seems to vary in its effectiveness across the institution. This is a concern held by LUU’s Education Officer and Democracy Support Team, who point out that, for example, the involvement of students in Staff-Student forums, and the use of forums to communicate policy decisions to students is not consistent.

UARs and LUU’s Education Officer have raised concerns about overuse of surveys, and subsequent increased reliance on traditional large scale surveys in order to gather feedback which is used to inform policy and practice. LUU’s current Education Officer says: “Whilst we recoginse the importance of canvassing student opinion and asking students to reflect on their student experience the previous education officer highlighted some concerns that students at Leeds were becoming over surveyed and that the University was in danger of damaging participation or the quality of responses by repeatedly seeking standard student participation in numerous surveys. The University has responded positively at is reviewing its current practice to see how best to involve students in the decisions taken, and how the University can best establish what the student experience is like here at Leeds.”

Perceived over-surveying may be managed by ensuring that Schools consult and communicate with students about action being implemented in response to survey results, and LUU is pleased to see the introduction of published action plans which respond to NSS data and which will be available for students to peruse online. Localized consultation is already practice in some Schools, such as the Institute of Psychological Sciences, which has used survey data as a starting point for consultations with students, and the School of Education, which has held focus groups for students to discuss NSS categories.