A photograph of a student asking a question at the Annual Members Meeting 2022

Rep Highlights 2025-2026

Rep Highlights 2025-2026

A year of Course and School Rep impact - student voices shaping academic life across UAL.

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92.2% of current reps

recommend being a rep!

95 of 103 responses

Impact at a glance

What our reps achieved this year

1,100

Reps trained

Across training and development activity

29

Reps of the Month

Nominations submitted across the year

1,400+

Total reps

Course and School Reps across UAL

23

Hours delivered

Training and development (total)

47

Shortlisted

Arts Awards - Rep of the Year (total)

Themes from Feedback this Year

Themes seen across feedback and testimonies

Assessment and briefs

Clarity, workload, fairness, and what students are being asked to produce.

Teaching content and course design

Depth, structure, and what’s included in teaching materials (including representation/diversity).

Tech and Systems

Tech problems in teaching sessions, systems/process issues (including attendance monitoring), and access to academic support.

Communication

Students missing key information and needing clearer, student-friendly channels for updates.

Real examples of rep work

Specific work Course Reps and School Reps delivered across the year.

Course Reps

Course-level feedback, fixes, and improvements.

A Film & Television Course Rep turned the feedback they had collected, through surveys and events they organised, into a structured report that the year leader explicitly praised as the clearest feedback they had ever received for that year group.
A Fashion Marketing Course Rep spotted that students miss important information when it’s only shared in the usual ways. They proposed using the course’s Instagram account to share events, key dates, and opportunities because students are already on it daily.
A Sound Arts: Design Course Rep helped improve the course by feeding student views into handbook amendments (so the official guidance students rely on is more accurate/useful). They also consistently raised issues affecting classmates by using staff office hours as a regular escalation route, not just saving concerns for formal meetings.
An Art: moving Image Course Rep built community on their course by organising weekly film screenings across spring and summer term, opened them across multiple pathways to allow students to learn from each other, created a printed/digital pamphlet of film information and, facilitated discussion afterwards.

School Reps

School-wide issues, campaigns, and escalation.

School Reps pushed to keep the Platform Theatre by requesting meetings with the Dean and management, through continuous negotiaton, and won a concrete outcome: the refurbishment has been postponed for another year. They are committed to continuing to push for a long-term solution.
A Design School Rep worked for 4 to 5 months on the problems caused by SEAtS. Students were being incorrectly flagged for low attendance, creating serious stress, including for international students concerned about visa implications. They collected and documented student experiences, worked directly with an SU Sabbatical Officer, escalated it to senior staff (including the Dean of Design), and raised it in a major staff-student meeting.

In their words

Student and staff testimony excerpts from this year

Assessments - "Next year students will be able to use the results of their formative assessment in their summative assessment, after a course rep articulately explained why this was appropriate"
Teaching content - “Someone pointed out the lack of diversity in films screened in lectures in one of the surveys, which helped tutors develop a more diverse curriculum”
Tech barriers in sessions - "We realised that students were severely struggling to keep up with the chaos of video editing sessions and that the root cause was constant tech problems. After relaying that feedback, we now have an extra professional hand on standby to help the main teacher and students keep up with the class. Attendance of those sessions had at one point dropped to 3 students... Now they're back up to 20!"
Course communications - "Suggestion to utilise the BA (Hons) Fashion Marketing course Instagram account as a clearer communication channel for announcing events, key dates, and opportunities"

Programme highlights

Training, connection, recognition

RC

Rep Con

A flagship conference bringing reps together for training, workshops, and cross-school connection.

"The rep convention was great, the workshops were informative and it was good to be around a bunch of course reps from different courses and colleges."
T&D

Training & development

Practical sessions that build confidence to advocate, gather feedback, and raise issues effectively.

"The skills development workshops are a great opportunity for course reps and the fact that they are specific for us makes it very special."
RoM

Rep of the Month

Recognition for reps who went above and beyond, highlighting initiative, care, and impact.

"Reps do so much work that never makes a headline, but it changes the day-to-day student experience."