Student involvement in decision making at the highest level in incorporated colleges was established in statute in 1992 through representation on college boards of management. A student representative on a college board of management could also be a member of board committees including those that dealt with, for example, student affairs and learning and teaching. The student representative on the board was normally the president of the students’ association. Thus the students’ association, which brought together student representatives from different parts of a college, could act as a bridge from the student body to senior college managers and the board. In about one in four colleges, the college funded the post of president of the students’ association, either on a full-time or part-time basis.3
Systems in Scottish FE colleges enabled students to express their views about their experiences in college. In addition to representation at board of management level, students were able to have their views heard in a number of ways and colleges took a range of approaches to gathering and acting on these views. In some cases, students were members of whole-college committees that had an impact on the student experience, such as academic boards and IT and guidance committees. Colleges normally had arrangements to allow students or their representatives to participate in programme committees or, in a few cases, to convey student views to these committees through student-staff liaison groups at programme or department level. Evaluation by students of their experience was central to college quality improvement arrangements and was an important aspect of any external evaluation, including HMIE reviews. Student evaluation might be based on their perception of: their educational experience at programme or unit level; their wider experience in college including the provision of resources and services; or a specific aspect of college arrangements such as equal opportunities procedures. The most common systematic approach for such evaluations was to use questionnaires, which might be paper-based or online. Many colleges used discussion forums or focus groups to give them more detailed feedback on specific issues.
In addition to the formal structures, colleges obtained students’ views from one-to-one and group meetings between students and teaching staff and between students and staff in student services departments. Staff often acted as advocates for their students, either formally or informally, to help them express their views or to convey the students’ views to the appropriate staff member or committee.