Edinburgh College Students’ Association

Edinburgh College collected FE Students' Union of the Year at the ceremony in Bolton

Edinburgh College collected FE Students’ Union of the Year at the ceremony in Bolton

NEW-NUS-Awards-2014-winnerFE Students’ Union of the Year

 

“‘The ECSA vision is ‘to champion a life-changing educational experience at Edinburgh College’. ECSA’s key strategic aim is: Partnership and Representation.

ECSA has had a significant impact on student lives this year and is the trailblazer of the Scottish FE Union sector. It has used the principles set up in the Griggs Review to develop a mature and truly partnered relationship with Edinburgh College.

ECSA is the first FE Union to sign a “Partnership Agreement” (based and expanding upon on sparqs guidance) with its institution. It sets out the areas of work that ECSA and the College will undertake together, lays out specific objectives and shows how they can be achieved. Areas of work included - improving the bursary service (specifically turnaround of applications,) the Care Leaver experience and the “Learner Reviewers” program. This sector unique program empowers students to review specific areas of the curriculum and courses that have low retention rates. Their recommendations are then used by the Quality department of the College improve the courses.

In addition the Partnership Agreement is linked to the College’s Outcome Agreement (OA). The OA, in addition to the compulsory measures set by the SFC, has a specific section and measures put in place by ECSA including, amongst others, women in STEM courses, students influencing the planning and delivery of their course and all College policies having ECSA sign off. The level of input ECSA had into the OA was unprecedented and will lead to real change within the College and students’ lives.

In addition to this ECSA helped hundreds of FE students at the beginning of the year when the College’s bursary system crashed and left them waiting weeks for payment. ECSA intervened and fast-tracked their applications to ensure they did not drop out.

ECSA’s most high profile campaign this year was to lobby the College to return all its catering services to an in-house model. The legacy Colleges all had very different catering models and this led to significant inconsistencies in the services available. Just as significantly the catering students doing long term placements in the canteens reported vastly different educational standards at each campus.

After listening to substantial anecdotal feedback, from students using the canteens and the work placement students, that the in-house model used at one campus was superior to the out sourced models at other campuses ECSA undertook a research project to substantiate and confirm the student’s claims.

This evidence based approach included focus groups and a survey which hundreds of students filled out. This gave Class Reps and students real ownership of the campaign.

Once the research was done it showed clearly that students felt that the service provided by Aramark (the out sourced caterer) was vastly inferior to that offered by the in-house model.

After repeated requests to meet with Aramark and discuss the issues were rejected ECSA organised a protest and boycott of Aramark on their Christmas lunch day. The boycott was a massive success with their Aramark profits for the day substantially reduced.

The Board of Management subsequently commissioned an independent report into the catering services at Edinburgh College. After intense lobbying by ECSA, when this report was presented it came with specific a recommendation that all catering services be returned in-house. The BOM provisionally approved this and the decision is expected to be ratified at the next BOM meeting.

ECSA have targeted hard to reach groups this year particularly Apprentices. In January ECSA held two “Imagine” style workshops with nearly 100 Apprentices attending over the two days. These workshops were designed to gather substantial feedback from the Apprentices on their educational experience and ECSA gained valuable data in the best way to engage them in the future and the issues they are facing right now. This data helped shaped the Partnership Agreement.

During the academic year EIS went on strike over pay and conditions. During this time the College remained open and many students were expected to attend classes despite uncertainty that they would actually take place. Initially the College told students their bursaries and childcare funds could be affected by non-attendance during strikes days however after intense negotiations and lobbying by ECSA the College reversed its stance thus ensuring that no student would have their student support affect by the strike.

During the strike ECSA met with various politicians and wrote to the cabinet secretary and pressured them to intervene and end the strike. This pressure helped push both sides into coming to a positive resolution thus ensuring minimum negative impact on the student experience.

ECSA has also ran numerous Lad Culture workshops. Targeting courses that are traditionally dominated by men, ECSA officers have gone into some of the most difficult environments and challenged sexism head on.

In addition to all this activity ECSA also ensured its long term future by securing the largest block grant ever awarded to a College Students Association in Scottish history. Learning and evolving ECSA first appointed an Association Manager in November before embarking on considerable strategic planning.

This planning resulted in a bid with a significant restructure and increasing in staffing. After expert behind the scenes lobbying, tying the bid into the College’s strategic plan and emphasising the partnership approach the BOM agreed to sign off on the bid. Despite losing £100,000 in SA funding from the SFC the BOM agreed to increase its investment from £110,000 to £274,677 in ECSA.

Other highlights from the year include persuading Kezia Dugdale to ask two question in parliament surrounding the discrepancies of FE childcare funding, successfully lobbing the College for fairer policies’ for student parking, students with caring responsibilities and bursary policy and supporting various sporting clubs to compete against other Colleges for the first time time including sending a student-led team to the Colleges Cup in Dundee. ECSA were also heavily involve in writing the Colleges’ Student Engagement Strategy and Learning and Teaching Strategy.”

Nominated by Graeme Kirkpatrick

What some of the judges said…

shane-chowen-edited“ECSA’s evidence based approach to campaigning and strategic relationship with the college, whilst protecting its autonomy, is highly commendable and has evidently has a positive impact on the student experience at the college. ECSA has a great vision and has taken account of evidence to inform its strategy and strategic planning process. ECSA’s achievements for its members and mutual respect with the college, formalised in a partnership agreement, has won the association additional resources.” Shane Chowen, Institute for Learning

Some comments from the night…