The Buddy Scheme is ready for its 2026 intake! By signing up to the scheme, you are paired with another practitioner in student engagement across institutions and students’ associations in Scotland, to give you the opportunity to discuss and have a sounding board external to your own institution.
Last year we had 5 pairs signed up, some of them returning from the previous year. Participants worked in 8 different institutions, split between 3 colleges, 3 universities and 2 tertiary institutions. This academic year we currently have 4 pairs and a trio in the scheme across 9 different institutions. We are now looking forward to welcoming more colleagues into the scheme in this January intake.
Buddies are asked to provide some feedback on the scheme throughout and at the end of the academic year. Among replies from previous years, participants reported they were able to meet at least three times in the academic year, both in person and online, with some suggesting it would be interesting to visit each other’s institutions to see how things run in a different organisation.
Topics discussed are not always pre-arranged and have spanned things such as recurring themes that they were dealing with, student engagement, course rep systems, elections and governance. Buddies so far have found it was a positive experience that they would like to carry on going forward.
Some feedback from Buddies:
“I feel we learned ways of overcoming hurdles. Ways to motivate officers, trying new approaches.”
“We talk about class rep recruitment and engagement, student elections, increasing student community on our main communication channels.”
“We discussed the similarities and differences between our institutions, engagement, our backgrounds and roles, and the PGR experience.”
“We have discussed reward and recognition, and I'm going to implement some of the practices used by my Buddy. We have also discussed how to motivate officers and support them with their workloads when they aren't engaging”
“I have learned more about how their SA works and some of the challenges they face, and how this translates to some of the challenges I face.”
“It was very valuable to have someone to talk to who is in a similar work position, as sometimes the role could feel a bit isolating.”
The Buddy Scheme fits within sparqs’ resources for professional development for students’ associations academic co-ordinators. See our induction guide for academic representation co-ordinators, which is updated annually.
How to sign-up
If you are interested in signing up this year, you can do so by completing this online registration form by Friday 13th February 2026.
Queries
For further details, or if you have any queries, please contact Amy Monks, Development Consultant - amy.monks@sparqs.ac.uk.