Interview with Aaron Porter

I suppose you must be quite excited to start your year as President? Is it June you start?

Aaron Porter: Officially, a July start. But I’m hugely excited about the year ahead; I think it’s a really significant time for students in further and higher education. I’ll be particularly focusing on some of those big challenges in the year ahead.

Has being NUS President been a long-term ambition of yours, or is it something you considered more recently?

AP: It’s only been something I’ve considered really in my time as Vice-President of Higher Education. Some of the big issues that I’ve been dealing with, whether that’s been student finance or student loans, or whether that’s been trying to improve the quality of what students get, is something I felt I could take to a national level and really take NUS forward in doing.

So you’ll be hoping to build on the work done by outgoing NUS President Wes Streeting over the last two years?

AP: I think it’s continuing to build upon Wes’ work, which I’ve been closely associated with, and ensuring that our campaign effectiveness continues to improve, and ultimately making sure NUS is at the heart of shaping a fairer outcome for students, whether that’s with regard to fees, or indeed with the quality of education.

I noticed you’ve been making a lot of headlines for criticising Labour and the Conservatives; you’ve argued that they’re not doing enough for students? Am I right in thinking that’s your opinion?

AP: Well, all of the major parties – I’d add the Liberal Democrats in there as well, I don’t think any of the parties have given enough detail on the issue of higher education. And that’s why NUS has had to initiate its own pledge to ensure that individual candidates and parties are doing enough. We’ve asked every single candidate in the upcoming general election to sign a simple pledge; that being that they would vote against any higher fees during the next Parliament. And we’ve had an overwhelming response – over 800 candidates have signed up. 300 are from the Liberal Democrats, 200 from Labour, but just 12 from the Conservative Party, and to me that is a real indication as to where the parties, and more importantly as to where the candidates, stand on HE funding.

So are you expecting tuition fees or anything along those lines to be addressed in the debates tonight?

AP: Well we can always hold out hope, but to be honest the parties have done everything they can possibly do to avoid answering the question. So my direct answer would be if a candidate hasn’t signed that pledge, they should not expect a single vote from students come May 6th.

When you get into office, the general election will have already taken place. I assume one of your first moves as NUS President will be to try and get whichever party is running the country to address students further?

AP: Absolutely, and I do believe that students can rightly ask for a better deal from whoever forms the next government. But I believe there can also be a really important discussion that comes before that; the outcome of a hung Parliament looks ever more likely, and I believe that we could get fees to be a dealbreaker in the formation of any coalition. I believe for all the parties that fees not going any higher would be something that the party can negotiate around in forming a hung Parliament.

What will be the other key areas that you’ll be focusing on over the next twelve months?

AP: I want NUS’ reputation as the national student voice to get stronger and get louder. That means that we need to have more direct contact with students. We need ensure that larger student numbers are seeing the benefit that we can provide for them on a daily basis. That means providing more effective support for students’ unions, talking about the big issues that affect students on a day-to-day basis – whether that’s the quality of teaching, their contact time, the resources on campus, and indeed the arrangement for student finance. NUS needs to be ensuring that students and students’ unions are seeing that we are fighting for them on their behalf.

Finally, you’ve been involved in student politics for quite some time now – you were Vice President of Higher Education, and were involved at the University of Leicester before that. Have you given much thought to what you’re going to do after this year? Have you considered running for a second term yet, or is it too early to think about that?

AP: I’m really wholly focused on the big issues for NUS this year - protecting funding for FE and HE, and the outcomes of the Brown review. I’ve not thought much beyond that.

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