About Us

An introduction to sparqs

sparqs was created in 2003 to support the greater engagement of students in the management of quality assurance and enhancement in Scotland's Colleges and Higher Education Institutions.The service is the responsibility of a consortium of partners consisting of:

 

We are hosted by NUS Scotland and our strategic direction is steered by a committee consisting of our partners.

Strategic direction for sparqs

In 2008, funding was confirmed on a rolling basis and prompted the development of our Strategic Plan covering the period between 2008-13. Following detailed consultation throughout the sector, we have articulated four strategic aims to implement our mission and vision as agreed with our Steering Committee which you can find in our Strategic Plan document.

Our core work will continue to be to support effective student representation.We will do this by providing appropriate training and support materials to the full range of student representatives within Higher Education Institutions and Colleges and assist institutions and their Students' Associations to make their systems more effective.

sparqs will facilitate opportunities for all students to participate by working with institutions and Students' Associations, assisting them to develop and improve their mechanisms for involving student groups that have traditionally been more difficult to engage with.

Colleges and Universities and their Students' Associations hold information and have practiced examples of involving students in quality and enhancement processes.We aim to provide opportunities for these practices to be shared, and used as a platform to learn from within the sector, as well as practices from other countries and sectors.

We strive to be innovative and responsive with our resources. By involving students and other service users in the design and delivery of our services, we ensure that we continue to use our resources effectively.

Our Activities

In working towards our strategic aims we deliver a series of activities consisting of:

  • Training and support. We develop and deliver training sessions for a variety of Student representatives (ranging from course representatives to Students' Association officers) to enable their effective engagement within quality processes.We recognise that staff also need to be assisted to empower students and therefore offer workshops for staff on how they can involve students. We have developed a series of supporting resources to enhance and complement this training.
  • Events. We organise a series of briefing events for student officers and workshops for staff within Colleges and Universities on managing effective representative systems.We also hold periodic national conferences on student engagement.
  • Sharing practice. We develop and distribute a series of reports on how to encourage effective student engagement.We also contribute to the policy debate around learning and teaching issues in both Colleges and Higher Education Institutions and assist other national sector agencies to engage students in their work.
  • Consultancy. The aim of our consultancy work is to support individual institutions in their own priorities regarding student engagement.We provide this bespoke support to institutions and Students' Associations through offering five days consultancy to each institution and their Students' Association.

 

Governance

The Scottish Funding Council for Further and Higher Education is our main funder and our partner agencies appoint our Steering Committee. Appointed members of the Steering Committee are as follows:

  • David Bottomley, QAA (Chair)
  • David Beards, Scottish Funding Council
  • Colin Buchanan, Scotland's Colleges
  • Liam Burns, NUS Scotland
  • Mike Day, NUS Scotland
  • Jane Denholm, Critical Thinking (independent member)
  • Juliet Fraser, HMIE
  • Murray Hope, HE Student Member
  • Alastair Robertson, Higher Education Academy
  • Kirsty Skidmore, Universities Scotland
  • To be appointed, FE Student Member

 

 
 
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