LSE Students’ Union Annual General Meeting
Annual General Meeting Running Order and Speech by Busayo Twins, General Secretary and Chair of the Trustee Board
- Welcome
- What the AGM is
- Ratification of the previous AGM
- Receive Trustees Report & Strategic Priorities Update
- Receive 2015/16 Accounts
- Appointments of the Auditors
- Review and Approve list of affiliations
- Discussion and Debate on the 2016/17Financial Year
- Discussion and Debate on the 2017/18 Financial Year
- Open questions to the Trustees by the members
- How you want the AGM to be run
- Willing to take a range of interventions as you go along
Hello everyone,
It’s great to see so many of you here to conclude what has been a brilliant year for democracy and student participation. This is our Annual General Meeting, which happens every year so that all students have a chance to ask questions to the trustees, approve our accounts and feed in to spending for the next year.
Ratification of the previous AGM
First of all we need to ratify the previous AGM and confirm that it took place on 5th May 2016 last year. Please can you vote to confirm that this took place? The recording of the AGM and the running order are available on our website at lsesu.com/yourunion
VOTE
Receive Trustees Report & Strategic Priorities Update
Great, thanks for approving that. I want to start with just rounding up from the AGM in May 2016 until the time we took office in July.
Just over 400 students completed our Annual Survey in June - July 2016. The survey asked in-depth questions about students’ satisfaction with every aspect of the Students’ Union. Unfortunately, the number of respondents this year was significantly lower than in previous years. This must be borne in mind when considering these findings.
The top three words associated with LSESU are: student-led, helpful and relevant. It is great that students see is as supportive of their time here at LSE!
In terms of what we’re doing well at:
71% of you think LSESU has improved student life at LSE
46% of you have a positive view of the union and 37% are proud to be part of LSESU
80% of you recognised Nona Buckley-Irvine as last year’s General Secretary
60% of you have been part of a club or society
80% of youbelieve it's important to take part in the democratic process
There are also some things that we need to improve:
You want to have more influence over your course, department, the School and LSESU
You said you wanted more pop and indie music played at Saucy
You said you want to be more informed and involved with what the union does. This was further shown by only 30% of you consider yourselves ‘involved’ with the union, so we need to do more work ensuring people feel they are an active part of what we do.
We’ve been aware for a while that certain groups of students, particularly international, postgraduate and part-time students are less engaged with the Union. The results from the Annual Survey didn’t show such hugely differing answers from these groups compared to the rest of the student body as might have been expected, but there was some indication that the Union still sometimes feels cliquey and inaccessible.
You said you wanted us to campaign more on exam re-sits and earlier time tables, which we have worked hard to achieve this year.
You also said you want our work and services to be of better quality. This is something we have listened to and is reflected in our new five year strategy.
Much has been achieved this year, but I want to focus on a few highlights:
Exam Resits– After 40 years of tireless lobbying from students and the students’ union the school has finally agreed to in year exam resits
Black History Month – Held a number of successful and wide ranging events that engaged the local community, LSE students and the LSE staff community. A lot of the sentiments and successes were built upon in the social mobility campaign
TEF and the NSS- Response to gov’t higher education reforms and the introduction of TEF2 the LSESU decided to launch an NSS boycott to discredit the new policy. The team spent weeks lobbying Academic Board who also agreed that entering in to TEF was not in the best interests of the organisation. Despite this, Council agreed to engage in TEF on the basis of the views of the SMC.
Sexual Harassment – The union secured £15,000 from HEFCE and LSE to target harassment, include consent and sexual harassment training. The Consent motion also had one of the highest voter turnouts of this year’s UGMs!
Wellbeing and exam stress – Building upon last year’s well-being and health survey(s) we have successfully lobbied the school to centralize the well-being and counselling services. In addition, we are currently in our third week of “De-stress Fest” to support students during the exam period.
The Students Union has also been working on a new Death of a Student Policy, aimed at ensuring that both the SU and School have a clear and collaborative response to death and serious injury of a student.
Mental Health First Aid training for all staff has been accepted by HR and will be implemented in preparation for the coming academic year.
Social Mobility Campaign – After a year long campaign to raise awareness of the experience students from low-socio economic/working class backgrounds, the student body successfully voted in favor of introducing a Social mobility and Class officer to the Exec via a referendum.
Within the School, the SU has been working closely with the School’s Widening Participation team, lobbying for stronger targets for both applications and intake of students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
The SU has also introduced a new programme in the style of 'Dragons Den'. It has been approved by Widening Participation, LSE Careers, LSE Generate, LSE Volunteering, LSE Alumni network and Julia Black. All these teams will work with the SU for a launch in the Summer term. It was introduced to promote entrepreneurship amongst BME students from disadvantaged backgrounds and boost LSE's outreach activity.
BME Attainment Gap - Over the 2016/17 academic year LSESU undertook some research into the attainment gap at the LSE . The report highlighted the gap but did not provide solutions or causes for the gap . In 2016/17, the officer team has been conducting research with the communities most affected by the attainment gap (i.e. those who tend to achieve the highest grades, versus those who tend to achieve the lowest grades) in order to ascertain whether there are any factors which could have an impact on a student’s attainment.
The project has been generously funded by the Annual Fund and Widening Participation who have funded the union £2,000 primarily as incentives for participants in focus groups and interviews.
The report will form the basis of lobbying activity over the following 3 years.
*The officer team has also held a conference with other Russell Group students’ unions looking at pushing the BME Attainment Gap and social mobility agenda across Russell Group institutions more effectively, with a presentation by Dr Wanda Wyporska, Executive Director of the Equality Trust.
Tour – In the absence of a Varsity style competition at the School, the Activities and Development Officer this year organised a very successful international, inter-sport Varsity with the Toulouse School of Economics.
Around 150 students from LSE went to Toulouse to take part in the Varsity which included rugby, football, tennis, running, basketball. Under the direction of the Activities and Development Officer, LSE won the overall cup which now sits proudly in the Saw Swee Hock Centre.
TALK THROUGH STRATEGY SLIDE
At the heart of everything we do are our values. We are proud of our values, they give us our identity, guide how we make decisions and how we conduct ourselves in a way that is unique to the LSESU. After consulting students, officers and staff we have created a strategy which will help direct the organisation’s activity over the next 5 years. It will be formally released in September 2017. To ensure we are as student led as possible this strategy will be regularly reviewed throughout its duration.
We are Supportive. We know that studying at University can be a tough time, but it can also be life changing. As an organisation we committed to supporting members to navigate university but also giving them the skills which empower them to develop.
We are ambitious. Every organisation desires to be excellent, but LSESU is committed to going further. We actively seek to redefine the push the boundaries of excellence for our students, our staff, our School and our communities. We are always striving for better.
We are member-led. We exist for the benefit of our members and work in their interest, our work must be led by our members. Being led by our members, we ensure that the diversity of student voices at the London School of Economics are at the heart of our decision making processes, campaigns, services and activities.
I am happy to take questions.
Accounts 2015/16
Our accounts were received by the School’s Finance Committee in January 2017.
We continue to make excellent progress on managing our finances and it can be considered a particularly positive year.
The Union has a mixture of restricted and unrestricted funds. Restricted funds can only be used for purpose they were given e.g. club and society memberships can only be used by those societies. Our Financial Accounts include all of these figures, and we need to approve what happened in 2015/16
The financial year to 31 July 2016 saw a surplus on unrestricted funds of £73k. This mainly resulted from having paid pension contributions (covering 3 years) in ‘14/15 totalling £197k. The lump sum nature of this payment has required the Union to build up its reserves in ‘15/16 and ‘16/17 through planned surpluses. The reason for the lump sum payment was to achieve an overall discount on these payments of £18k.
The Union’s unrestricted reserves were £145k before a pension deficit of £1,075k[1], with an additional £383k held by the Union for restricted activities. There is a plan to build up unrestricted reserves towards a sustainable level (£200k, with additional amounts set aside to fund the future replacement of gym equipment).
These Accounts have been approved by our Auditors, the Trustee Board and have been seen by the School’s Finance Committee.
VOTE
Appointment of the Auditors
Although private limited companies require rotation of engagement leader and manager every five years, the requirement is for a change in external auditor to occur at least every 10 years for companies of the size of LSESU.
The external auditors are Crowe Clarke Whitehill (CCW).
CCW are a mid-tier firm but are charity specialists ranked #1 in Charity Finance Audit Survey for charity expertise and market share and =2 for overall service (after Hays Macintyre). CCW write the guidance for SUs including provision of template accounts and also provide seminars for SU finance managers. They provide specific technical briefings for NUS and individual SUs which have been the subject of national debate (e.g. on accounting for pension deficits), and will be subject to significant technical changes for multi-employer schemes (including LSESU).
Therefore, whilst no rotation of auditors is required this year, it is good practice to review the audit service provision periodically – e.g. through an internal assessment, formal benchmarking or full retender. This was discussed last year at the Trustee Board and we want to retain CCW until a further review was considered to be required.
VOTE
Review and Approve list of affiliations
There are 13 organisations I am presenting to the AGM on behalf of the Trustee Board which I am proposing we affiliate to.
These come as a package, so you need to approve all or reject all of them. I am happy to take questions on any of them before we vote.
VOTE
Discussion and Debate on the 2015/16Financial Year
•Annual expenditure of £6.6m
•26% of this is on staffing costs, 21% on rent & service charges (grant funded)
•£1.1m on student engagement
•£1.6m on clubs and societies
•£0.8m on student activities
•£0.3m on student support and welfare
•£0.4m contribution from commercial services, which was reinvested in student services.
If there are any questions about what we have spent this year, or why some things have been funded / or not funded, then please let me know.
Discussion and Debate on the 2017/18 Financial Year
We will shortly begin negotiations with the School on the budget for the year ahead. I know, not just from motions this year, that there are areas students would like to see us expand. The AGM is a great opportunity to ensure you can be actively involved in shaping the discussions, so I’ll open to the floor to answer some of the questions here
We want to give you opportunity to shape budget discussions before they have begun:
1. Are there areas you think we should increase funding for?
2. Are there areas you think we should decrease funding for?
3. Are there areas you think we should stop?
All I would ask is that you be sensitive to the fact that a lot of our expenditure is spent on staff costs, and this isn’t an opportunity to criticise our staff team or comment on them as individuals.
Questions to the Trustee Board
Insert footnotes here
[1] This is a technical accounting deficit in relation to the Union’s share of a pooled pension scheme. Like many schemes, it is deficit and the Union now has to show this on its balance sheet after changes in accounting requirements.