Welcome to your monthly update from the Students’ Union on all things student voice and representation

January 2026

✨ Student Assembly

This month saw the SU make history with its first Student Assembly! It was an opportunity for you to tell your stories, express your feelings, and find community on the 6 proposals to become our focus for the next year.

The areas are:

• Finance (Cost of Studying & Living) - students spoke about how food poverty was a part of their daily reality with some only having £80 after paying fees and rent.

• Accessibility & Inclusion – students discussed their reasonable adjustments not being met leaving them unable to access their education, how university systems don’t respect identities and that the lack of inclusive and affordable food makes the refectories unwelcoming for certain communities.

• Placements & Clinical Learning – students highlighted how placement costs are pricing them out of education, the lack of learning on placement and the guidance pre placement being inconsistent.

• Campus Facilities – students voiced concern about the bus to Burnley campus not meeting the volume of student needs, lack of accessible doors around all campuses and the lack of belonging in Burnley.

• Teaching, Assessment & Curriculum – students here spoke about having differing guidance on the same assessment, bunched assessments, biased marking, lack of classroom management, inappropriate comments being unchallenged

• Timetabling – students told us about their frustration with classes being changed or cancelled last minute which impacted several communities in different ways. Students also frustrated with unwritten policies that state when students are more than ten minutes late they are shut out of their education, some even report being humiliated in front of their peers without the opportunity for them to at least give context to their situation.

Over January with your help, we’re narrowing these down to three priorities that will shape the Students’ Union’s Organising work.

🗳️Student Priorities

We are now asking you to help decide what the Students’ Union should focus on next and what priorities we move forward with in the New Era. With voting running from now until January 31st, you can choose three of the six priority areas.

Voting is only part of the process. The comment section is just as important and we want to hear:

• What your experience has been

• How issues affect you day to day

• What you think needs to change

• Any ideas or solutions you want the Union to explore

Comments are anonymous to other students and when voting is complete, the top three priorities will be confirmed.

👂 Use your voice — we’re listening

A big shoutout to everyone who’s already jumped onto the Student Voice Platform , if you haven’t yet don’t stress, you can sign up anytime and give us your feedback.

Just before the winter break, there were 120 new posts. You’ve raised:

• 62 Issues

• 27 Praises

There’s a Students’ Union board on the platform too, so you can share feedback directly with us!

🎙️ In Conversation with Postgraduate Students

As part of our work on student personas, we explored your postgraduate experiences, including Postgraduate Taught, Research and PhD students. Focusing on feeling a sense of belonging at the University of Lancashire for postgraduate, we discovered that most postgraduate students sometimes or often feel isolated from others.

“Casual gatherings, just relaxed spaces to chat (...) would make it easier for postgraduates to connect naturally and feel part of the community.”

-  When asked about how we could support them with feeling included and finding a community at the university, students highlighted the need for more regular social meet up opportunities (both online and offline), drawing special attention to the unique position of PhD candidates when planning social events, as they feel in-between their staff and student status.

“I want more socials and networking events linking me to other students in my subject area, across degree levels.”

- In addition to the need for more social events, postgraduate students pointed out their interest in more opportunities to connect in academic and professional spaces.

“Postgraduates can feel isolating for students on campus, and it is exacerbated for online students”

- The importance of and need for an online space for students to connect with peers and engage with the community to combat isolation, is highlighted.

 “More transparency and updates regarding the process of my application (...) constructive feedback on errors rather than feeling like I am being put on trial.”

- More insight into the progression of individual applications and constructive support with provisos and adjustments would be beneficial for students to learn and progress with their projects.

💡 How you’re using our Advice Service

When things get tricky, our Advice Service is here to help. It’s free, confidential, and independent — and it’s open to every student, no matter what you’re studying or where you’re based.

In December, most of you who reached out came from:

• Medicine & Dentistry (18.8%)

• Health, Social Work & Sport (16.7%)

• Engineering & Computing (12.5%)

The main reasons you came to us were:

• Complaints (22.9%)

• Appeals (14.3%)

• Academic conduct (14.3%)

• Fitness of Practice (14.3%)

• Fee Arrears (11.4%)

Lots of students also asked about attendance, placements, funding, housing and course changes — the everyday things that can really add up.

The message is simple: you don’t have to deal with it alone.
Find out more about our Advice Service

👥 A word from your SU Reps

Your SU Reps have been out across campuses, listening to how you’re finding the start of the year — what’s going well and what could be better.

Avery echoed the concerns some postgraduates are feeling, providing insight into the busy student life of being a postgraduate at the University of Lancashire - “As a postgraduate student, I face more challenges than I did in my undergraduate degree with many of them being unexpected challenges.”