Welcome

What is the role of students in our audit?
Student representatives are invited to produce a Student Written Submission (SWS) and to be involved in meetings throughout the process. 

 

The sabbatical officers are involved in the preliminary meeting, the briefing visit, and possibly the audit visit, and are responsible for coordinating any student submission.

 

Academic representatives at the subject or course level are invited to attend specified meetings during the audit.

 

Other relevant student groups, such as postgraduates, are invited to attend specified audit visit meetings. 

 

What should we include in the written submission?
There is no formula for what the SWS should look like. The most important thing to remember is that there is information about your institution that only you can provide.

However, as the audit team's judgements are about the management of the quality of the learning opportunities available to students, and the management of the standards of the awards, there are some things that the team cannot take into account. Therefore, whilst it is useful to the team to know whether the student voice is listened to in committees, it is perhaps less useful to know about the floodlights on the football pitch.

To help you think about what it might be useful to include, you could consider the following.

How accurate is the information that the institution publishes about itself, such as prospectuses, programme descriptors and advertisements?
Do students know what is expected of them in order to be successful?
What is the student experience as a learner like, including teaching and learning opportunities, support received and access to learning facilities?
Do students have a voice in the institution and is it listened to?
Don't worry if you don't have the information to cover all these points, anything you tell the audit team about these areas is useful.

Whatever you include, you must explain how you compiled the SWS, who wrote it, and how far it has been shared and agreed with the student body as a whole. For example, if you have only included the views of full-time undergraduate students, you need to make this clear.

You should also make sure that the SWS doesn't include personal grievances or discussion of the competency of individual members of staff.

How much detail should we put into our submission?
You should always make reference to the evidence upon which the views expressed in the SWS are based (for example, student surveys or feedback from student representatives). Giving evidence of your claims, such as reference to minutes of meetings, will help the auditors when they are making their judgements and writing their final report.

It is useful to remember that the team will have a lot of information to read, both from the institution and other publicly available documents. Therefore a short but focused SWS is better than a lengthy and rambling document. The team is not marking the SWS, just interested in the information contained in it, so there are no extra marks for colour or length!

 

Which students' views should be represented in the submission?
The audit generally looks at matters across the institution as a whole, so the opinions of all student groups will be relevant including, but not exclusively, undergraduate and postgraduate students, those on franchised courses, students who are part-time, mature students, overseas students and students with disabilities. Your institution will provide you with information on the scope of the audit.

You may find that it is not possible to reflect the views of some student groups and the audit team will understand this as long as you make it clear in your SWS whose views are being represented.

 

Is what we say going to make a difference?
Yes. The audit team considers all information given in the SWS and in meetings. The submission may not directly inform the final judgements that the audit team makes, but it could inform the types of questions the team asks throughout the audit.

The auditors have to interpret all of the information they are given, including the information given in the SWS and by students in meetings.

This may lead the team to find out something really good about how the institution works, or might lead it to something that students are concerned about. For example, if students don't feel that their opinions are valued by the institution, or conversely if they think the institution really listens to them, this is likely to become apparent through talking to the students and through reading the SWS. 
 

 

What happens if the SWS conflicts with the institution's briefing paper?
The audit team uses both documents to inform the lines of enquiry that it will make during the visit. Conflicting information might inform an area for further scrutiny.