Canterbury College Students’ Union wins national NUS and LSIS awards

Canterbury College Students’ Union has recently been highly commended by two National Organisations, National Union of Students (NUS) Learning and Skills Improvement Service.

On Friday 12 June Canterbury College Students’ Union was voted the 3^rd best FE Students’ Union in the UK at the NUS awards held at the Brewery Hotel in London. The awards recognise outstanding achievements and demonstrate best practice in Students’ Unions across the UK. The awards were judged by NUS, Endsleigh, Amnesty International and SUEI. Finalists were selected from almost 200 nominations from over 60 Students’ Unions across the UK.

This result places Canterbury College Students’ Union in the top three FE Students’ Unions in the UK for two consecutive years. The awards were hosted by comedian Marcus Brigstocke, who said:

 ‘The judges commented on the exceptionally high calibre of this year’s finalists with one judge commenting that ‘Higher Education Unions should watch out, these top 3 Further Education Unions are fantastic’.

On Wednesday 1 July Canterbury College Students’ Union attended the LSIS - leading the learner voice awards held at Kensington Roof Gardens in London. LSIS celebrates the achievements that individuals and organisations in the further education and the skills sector have made in embedding the learner voice.

Canterbury College Students’ Union was short listed for the category of ‘representative organisation of the year’, which recognises the diverse range of learner representative organisations and seeks to celebrate the achievements of an organisation that does its best with limited resources to involve, represent and organise learners.  The judges voted the Students’ Union runner up in this category and were impressed by the ‘huge and varied number of involvement opportunities at Canterbury College’.

The event was hosted by Dame Ruth Silver (Chair of Board at LSIS) and Joe Martin (Strategic coordinator, learner and citizen empowerment at LSIS), who also commented:

“This year we received a record number of entries, all of an exceptionally high standard. As the concept of learner voice has grown throughout the sector, standards have risen dramatically and this was reflected in some of the truly inspiring submissions we received’.

Callum Greenwood President of the Students’ Union said ‘I am impressed by the enthusiasm and involvement shown by the students at Canterbury College when getting involved with Students’ Union activities and this has been reflected by Canterbury College Students’ Union being nominated for two nationally recognised awards’.  

For information on the NUS Awards visit http://www.nuswards.org.uk

For information on the LSIS Awards visit http://www.centreforexcellence.org.uk/conference/default.aspx