Student Voice Across Three Nations: Insights from the RAISE Buddy Scheme

As participants of the RAISE Buddy scheme this year, we were brought together through a shared commitment to understanding, amplifying and embedding student voice within our respective organisations. Whilst the policy landscapes of England, Wales and Northern Ireland differ, our discussions revealed common commitments where we all recognise the fundamental importance of ensuring that students are not only listened to but are active partners in shaping educational experiences and outcomes.

Our perspectives reflect the breadth of student voice practice across higher and healthcare education. Kevin (Quality Enhancement Manager) brings extensive experience of student representation, quality enhancement and institutional governance at Ulster University, where student feedback is embedded throughout quality processes. Emma’s (Head of Learning and Teaching Enhancement) work at the University of Northampton focuses on listening directly to students through research, partnership with the Students’ Union and strategic enhancement initiatives that place student voice at the centre of learning and teaching across the university. George, formerly Education Development Manager at Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW), contributed a national perspective through his work where supporting mechanisms that enabled healthcare students’ experiences and priorities to inform educational development and organisational direction across Wales.

Through our collaboration, we have explored how student voice can be meaningfully captured, understood and translated into action across different settings and national contexts. This piece aims to share our reflections, learning and emerging insights, while encouraging further dialogue about how institutions and organisations can create authentic opportunities for students to shape the decisions that affect them.

When it came to discussing specific examples of student engagement within our respective organisations, despite all operating within different nations and different working contexts, the common threads in our practice were easily identifiable. Some specific examples that emerged include:

• Student voice drives tangible change: Whether it’s redesign of a university assessment brief, quality interventions being triggered by student feedback through the NSS or creation of a national Welsh language healthcare handbook, student input has prompted tangible change to institutional and national processes in all of our organisations.

• Student voice and partnership is embedded across multiple levels: All of us could provide examples of how student voice and partnership operated across multiple different levels of our respective organisations. This included contributing to the design of processes and resources, involvement in the operation of organisation-wide quality processes and inclusion in the governance arrangements as committee members and co-chairs.

• Building foundations for effective student voice: All of us have experience of building institutional and student capacity to engage in student voice activities. In Northampton, work has been underway between the University and Students’ Union to co-create a new student voice policy. At Ulster, the Centre for Quality Enhancement provides wraparound support to student representatives engaging within university committees. At HEIW, the ‘Caring through Welsh’ handbook has been developed to build student confidence in communicating with patients through the medium of Welsh.

  
  

Collectively, these examples demonstrate a mature model of student engagement that enhances the lived student experience while delivering continuous institutional improvement.

It can be easy to talk about ‘student voice’ and ‘student engagement’ as desirable things that are good for institutions. It is a different thing to move beyond the rhetoric and to make this a reality. Institutions have agendas and contexts that may explicitly state the importance of student involvement, with individual roles within these institutions having explicit responsibilities around incorporating student voice. Others may not, or it may be more of a challenge to deliberately, and genuinely, bring student voice into the everyday work of their institution. We are fortunate that our own institutions prioritise student engagement and student voice, and that in our respective roles, we can tangibly see the benefits of working with students. For each of us, we can state that listening to students and encouraging them to participate has given our work authenticity and legitimacy. Our collaboration through the RAISE Buddy Scheme has given us new ideas to try in our respective institutions, whilst collectively, it has given us the potential to collaborate, giving ourselves and our students new opportunities.  

We have shown here how student voice is relevant across a large variety of projects, work streams, roles and institutions. We hope this gives confidence to others to partner with students and to take the time and make the effort to genuinely include students in all that they do.