Finance, Feedback & Student Charter

Over the past couple of weeks, as previously mentioned in my other blogs, I have been taking the current issues around printing and bursaries forwards and elevating their importance to UCS. We have our first major success! UCS had changed their policy on when bursaries would be paid to students so that they would be paid 100% at the end of May. On finding this out I immediately got into discussion with UCS’ Finance department, who are responsible for paying the bursaries, to ask them exactly what they were thinking. After explaining what a profound mistake they were making by doing this as being paid a bursary at this time was in fact of no use to students they have decided to move their payment schedule to a split payment of the bursaries, 50% in February and 50% in May. We know this isn’t ideal but is still a great deal better than the original plan which had been outlined and we will not stop here and continue to try and get the bursaries paid at a time which is useful to the students receiving them.
 
As I mentioned earlier on, I am still fighting issues around printing at UCS and will be taking this to the first Union council of the year to gauge their dis/satisfaction with the system. As well as this, I am getting closer to achieving one of my main manifesto points of improving feedback students receive at UCS. Taking steps towards this I have pushed to get the university to quantify and finally explain what their understanding of “feedback” is and all the other buzz words which go along with it, such as “timely”, “constructive” and “relevant” and I will be working with a group of people within the university to finally decide a just meaning and understanding of the word which is thrown around without any consequences of its use, maybe sometime soon when someone states a student has received feedback we will actually all understand the expectations of what that means and that the delivery can be measured.
 
Besides the normal day to day stuff I have dealt with I have also started discussion with the Head of Quality at UCS about the construction of a Student Charter, which was also one of my key manifesto points when I ran for election. This will go a long way to understanding and managing students, institutional and staffs expectations. There will be more to come on all of these issues in future weeks.
 
Andy