There is no other organisation in the UK that does what the National Union of Students does.
When it works well – and it has worked well plenty of times – it gives students a collective voice in policy debates that would otherwise be shaped entirely by governments, regulators and institutions talking to each other.
It trains future leaders, builds solidarity across campuses, and forces issues onto the national agenda that would otherwise be quietly managed away.
Right now, students need that voice more than they have in years. Tuition fees are about to cross the £10,000 threshold, student loans are getting mainstream political traction for the first time since 2010, and universities are cutting staff and closing courses at a pace that would have been unthinkable five years ago.
International students are being treated as a revenue stream and a political football simultaneously. And across the four nations, the regulatory and funding landscapes are diverging so fast that “UK higher education” is becoming less and less meaningful as a single category.
NUS elects its officers every two years, and heading into this season with momentum. The recent work on parental contributions to living costs and frozen repayment thresholds has been sharp, well-timed, and cut through with policymakers and media in ways that demonstrated what the organisation can do when it gets its campaigning right.
The reformed federal structure – with an England President replacing the old UK-wide figurehead, and two-year terms giving officers more time to deliver – is designed to let the new team operate as a collective executive across four nations, each with its own legislative agenda, funding crisis, and set of political opportunities.
Nominations have now closed for all seven full-time officer positions, with new officers taking up their posts in July. Here’s who’s standing, what they’re promising, and what the political weather looks like for each role.
NUS England President
Seven candidates are competing for the new England President role – a position created to align with the existing national presidencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The winner will be the primary voice for NUS in an England-specific policy context that is moving fast and not always in students’ favour.
Tuition fees are heading north of £10,000 for 2027–28, with future rises tied to TEF performance. The international student levy is reshaping recruitment and institutional finances. The student loans system is under more public scrutiny than at any point since 2010, with frozen repayment thresholds and rising interest rates making “graduate tax by stealth” a mainstream talking point.
Meanwhile universities are in worsening financial shape – deficits are growing, staff are being cut, and the possibility of a disorderly market exit looms. All of this while the post-16 white paper sets an ambitious two-thirds participation target but offers little new money to get there.
Whoever takes the role will need to rebuild trust between NUS and its member unions – and that means being clear about what the organisation can credibly deliver, on whose mandate, and with what accountability.
Lilian Watson from Chester Students’ Union emphasises transparency and grassroots accountability. Her focus on international students – fair visa policies, dedicated advocacy and representation, protection from exploitation – runs throughout.
Regular open briefings and accessible reporting with a public timeline of deliverables.
Policy pressure on immigration and employment law to allow for national legal and advice partnerships in institutions.
She highlights experience securing external funding and increasing local democratic engagement.
Producing a termly Student Cost of Living Report that looks at all student communities.”
Elliot Briffa from the University of Manchester is sabb and a political organiser whose CV includes the Greater Manchester Tenants Union central committee and a rent strike.
Decades of depoliticisation and removal of democratic structures has left NUS unequipped for the world we live in now.
National lobbying to see rent control powers given to local authorities in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.
He wants to transition NUS to direct student membership with one-member-one-vote, total replacement of maintenance loans with grants, and rent control powers devolved to local authorities via the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.
A key part of this consultation should focus on determining the primary purpose for Democratic Conferences moving forward and exploring the return of explicit votes on policy.
Rohan Rajesh from Anglia Ruskin is the current SU President and an NUS Regional Lead. His manifesto addresses governance and accountability questions – he wants a published Mandate and Decision Framework clarifying what requires conference approval, what needs structured consultation, and what sits within existing policy:
When national positions are unclear, or shaped without transparent mandate, officers are left defending decisions they did not help shape. That weakens trust and makes difficult campaigns harder.
Being bold does not mean bypassing authority. When NUS speaks, it must do so with both moral clarity and student-led legitimacy.
He promises quarterly updates on meetings secured, policy movement achieved, and barriers encountered, and has a focus on the mechanics of trust and mandate:
I believe elected student leadership should shape our national union, not be managed by it.
Each year, NUS will publish a National Student Leadership and Mandate Review.
Adil Musani from the University of Westminster is a sabb who has led initiatives reducing barriers to mental health care and expanding essential support spaces for students.
Recognising the complexity of government funding structures, I will push for phased and evidence-led approaches, including pilot schemes and institutional partnerships, to demonstrate need and feasibility.
His manifesto centres on evidence-led advocacy and strengthening NUS’s relationship with local SUs. He wants to make student housing a national campaigning priority and introduce an International Student Support Grant, using bi-annual student surveys and structured consultation to build the evidence base.
The evidence gathered will be used to strengthen NUS policy positions and national campaigns, supporting robust, data-led advocacy with government departments, regulators, and sector decision-makers.
Working through NUS housing policy, sector partnerships, and regulatory engagement to push for stronger protections, better standards, and increased affordability.
Favour Alexander Samuel from the University of Nottingham is the current SU President and a qualified human rights lawyer from South Africa who previously coordinated a crisis response for over 900 Ghanaian students facing deportation.
As a human rights lawyer, I do not make promises. I name violations and I build the structures to enforce remedies.
Her manifesto leans into legal frameworks and rights-based language – she wants to restore the Graduate Route to 24 months, establish a pro-bono legal defence network for students, and fight to recognise misogyny as a hate crime.
We will get MPs in front of Vice-Chancellors to deliver one clear message: chilling student speech is a human rights breach, not a risk management strategy.
We will ensure that NUS-UK has a seat at the table on migration policy – the Home Office cannot preside over international students’ futures without consulting us.
Oluwadamilola Iyanda from Birmingham City University is currently VP Welfare, having previously served as VP Equity and Inclusion, and won the 2025 Sir Lenny Henry Inclusivity Award.
Equity must be structural, not symbolic. We must transform systems, not just describe problems.
Consultation without consequence is not leadership; policies must have enforcement and accountability.
She wants a national attainment gap audit with legally binding targets, national rent controls for purpose-built student accommodation, free or discounted public transport, and 24/7 trauma-informed services.
Conduct a national Attainment Gap Audit with legally binding targets to drive systemic change.
Pooja Gautam from Ravensbourne Students’ Union is a current Vice President whose manifesto includes a National Student Living Index:
Launch a National Student Living Index to track rent, food, and transport costs.
Develop a cross-party Student Policy Charter.
Pooja also promises a Student Housing Taskforce, a cross-party Student Policy Charter, and ring-fenced mental health funding.
The next President of the National Union of Students must be more than a spokesperson. They must be a strategist, a negotiator, and a unifier.
NUS Vice President Higher Education
Ten candidates are contesting what is arguably the most technically complex role in the NUS officer team. The VP HE will need to navigate the Lifelong Learning Entitlement’s troubled implementation, the first academic staff cuts in over a decade, the Employment Rights Act’s rolling changes, OfS’ new harassment and sexual misconduct condition E6 and its enforcement gaps, the international student levy’s impact on cross-subsidy models, and the ever-present question of whether a large provider might hit the wall.
The role also demands fluency in the regulatory architecture – OfS, TEF, Access and Participation Plans, the OIA – at a time when the government is simultaneously reforming and constraining that architecture. The question of marketisation – who pays, who benefits, and who is protected when things go wrong – sits underneath almost everything.
Lewis Wilson from Sussex is the Education and Employability Officer who delivered a Socially Responsible Investment Policy divesting millions from unethical companies, stood up for trans+ rights, saved students over £500,000 in bus fares by cutting student ticket fares and secured a rent freeze in accommodation.
Pressure government to stop ‘Super-TEF’.
I will campaign for the government to reform Personal Independence Payment (PIP), so that it is fair, and accessed based on need, not on the economic or social capital of the applicant.
He wants to challenge the government’s plan to link future fee rises to TEF performance, campaign for expanded maintenance grants, fight the international student levy, lobby for an extension to the Graduate Route visa, and push for PIP reform. He is also explicit about cross-portfolio working with the VP Liberation on trans rights and divestment.
Organise the student movement nationally to resist further marketisation.
Advocating for divestment across the education sector.
Maanya Raju from Warwick is an international student who worked her way up from frontline SU roles to Vice President.
Student leadership cannot remain consultative while decisions are structural. Too often, students are invited into rooms after the outcome is decided. Representation without leverage is symbolism.
Her manifesto focuses on institutional accountability – she wants a public breakdown of international fee cross-subsidy at every institution, an annual national scorecard ranking progress on awarding gaps, and forced national consistency on AI assessment policy. She also wants postgraduate representation structurally embedded in national campaigns.
Demand a public breakdown of international fee cross-subsidy across institutions, using NUS research and media pressure where transparency is refused.
Escalate directly with regulators where institutional accountability fails.
Jeena Thomas from ARU is an Education Officer who co-created an institutional accountability framework and worked nationally on the Pay the Placement campaign.
Building a united front with trade unions like the RCN and UCU and healthcare charities to force the government’s hand on placement poverty.
Her central plank is coordinated lobbying for paid healthcare placements, building a coalition with the RCN and UCU. She also wants to end the sector’s reliance on spiralling international fees through a sustainable publicly funded model and promises quarterly accountability updates.
The funding structure disproportionately burdens international students, healthcare students, and postgraduates while universities themselves remain financially fragile. It requires national coordination, structured advocacy, and measurable accountability.
Leadership is not performance. It is delivery.
Nasir Mohammed from City St George’s is a two-term sabbatical officer and law graduate whose distinctive proposals include a national Working Student Guarantee and a Student Time and Cost Audit requiring universities to be transparent about hidden course costs and realistic time commitments.
Student activism taught me why change is necessary and legal study taught me how change actually happens. If we want to challenge, protect students and hold institutions to account, we need to understand both the political and legal games being played.
He also wants to challenge the misuse of disciplinary processes against student activists.
Knowing when to challenge, when to negotiate, and how to use the rules of the system to force progress rather than be stalled by it.
Ensure students and officers can meaningfully influence national positions, not just endorse them.
Esther Adeyemo Ahiaba from Sussex is the International Students Officer and Chair of Trustees, who successfully campaigned for an International Access and Participation Plan at her institution.
I will ensure that stakeholders and government bodies, especially the Office for Students, engage meaningfully with students before introducing tools and policies that directly affect those they are meant to protect.
She centres international students’ experience throughout, promising to fight the international student levy, reform guarantor requirements sector-wide, and increase structured international representation within NUS’ democratic spaces.
Ensure Access and Participation Plans are meaningful and not simply compliance exercises for the Office for Students.
Campaign nationally against the international student levy and all hostile policies.
Francis Ani from Hull is in his second term as a sabbatical officer and leads on ethical AI in education. He wants the OfS to develop AI assessment policies grounded in consumer protection rights.
Lobby the Office for Students for policies on implementation of AI in marking, teaching and assessment standards based on consumer protection rights.
Request for research around the economic and cultural impact of international students for better lobbying efforts.
He also wants increased working hours for international students, a National Bus Card with student discounts, and UKRI funding protected for postgraduate researchers.
Link wellbeing policies directly to assessment design, workload, and teaching practices.
Badhri Sai Purnima Raj Durgapu from De Montfort is currently a Student Voice Leader and Employability Officer.
Institutional advocacy alone is not enough. We need national leadership that pushes further.
Campaign for fair academic policies, improved financial support, stronger mental health provision, and employability embedded in every course.”
The manifesto covers transparent assessment, maintenance funding, mental health services, and placements, with an emphasis on ensuring employability is embedded in every course.
Ensure national campaigns reflect real student experiences.
Saroj Kumar Kamtee from University College Birmingham is in his second term as Societies and Activities Officer, having established a student foodbank and secured free transport for students for a month.
Campaign to end the marketisation of education and make universities free at the point of use.
He wants to end the marketisation of education and make universities free at the point of use, scrap the 20-hour international student work cap, introduce national rent caps, and campaign for a statutory duty of care.
Campaign for a statutory duty of care to legally protect students and hold institutions accountable.
Set minimum standards for funded liberation officer roles, with real budgets and genuine decision-making power – ending tokenism.
Shayaike Hassan from UCA draws on lived experience as an international student navigating visa uncertainty and rigid fee deadlines.
Establish a permanent racialised student advisory group within NUS to ensure lived experience shapes policy year-round.”
They want a permanent racialised student advisory group within NUS, a practical anti-racism framework, and transparency in how student loan interest and repayment terms are calculated.
Academic policy consistency related to visas, attendance rules, progression decisions, and reporting linked to immigration compliance needs national guidance.
I will focus on realistic, achievable commitments that NUS can genuinely influence.
NUS Scotland President
Scotland’s incoming NUS President takes office just weeks after May 2026’s Holyrood elections – which polls suggest will produce a more divided parliament – and in the immediate aftermath of the Tertiary Education and Training Act’s passage.
That legislation puts new duties on universities, expands the Scottish Funding Council’s powers, and commits the next Scottish government to publishing a national funding strategy.
The quantum of funding remains the elephant in the room, and there is growing political pressure to redirect resources towards FE and apprenticeships at higher education’s expense.
Whoever takes the role will need to be fluent in the new legislative landscape and ready to hold the next government to the commitments now baked into statute – while navigating the question of how independently NUS Scotland should operate from NUS UK.
Justine Pedussel from the University of Stirling is a sabbatical officer who founded a housing campaign that led to legal change and is co-leading the Scottish elections campaign. Her manifesto demonstrates a detailed grasp of the Tertiary Education Act and its implications – she references the new requirement for student consultation before significant institutional decisions, and the ministerial duty to create a national funding strategy.
We’ve successfully lobbied on the Tertiary Education Bill giving the Scottish Funding Council more powers and statutory duties over our institutions.
NUS Scotland should not have to follow policies set out by NUS UK as these reflect the system and issues in England and not Scotland.
She makes an explicit case for NUS Scotland’s operational independence, arguing that Scottish students need an organisation that reflects their distinct system and politics rather than following England-focused policy.
Scottish ministers now need to create a national funding strategy for Scotland’s national and local skill needs.
The bill creates a requirement to consult students before implementing any decision that could significantly affect students, staffing levels, or financial sustainability.”
Adam Lowe from Edinburgh College Students’ Association is the current President there, bringing an FE perspective.
Takes one FE and one HE regional lead that will sit on a National ‘Committee’ – this will allow student officers to work closely with MSPs as a two-way direct contact.
He wants regional FE and HE leads sitting on a national committee with direct MSP contact, a data-driven approach to cost of living campaigning, and a united front of welfare officers to lobby for funding protections.
By using our quantitative and qualitative data and uniting our Welfare and Wellbeing officers we can create a front that is evidently tangible and seen by those in control of the funds.
Don’t forget that most of the people fighting against Student Unions and Associations are wanting to divide and conquer.
NUS Cymru President
Wales is in the middle of a regulatory transformation. Medr – the new Commission for Tertiary Education and Research – is building the UK’s most ambitious unified regulatory framework covering FE, HE, apprenticeships, adult learning and school sixth forms, with most requirements applying from August 2026.
But it inherits a sector in deep financial trouble after brutal funding cuts, and its own subject mapping reveals a system that is simultaneously too geographically concentrated and too thin in subject breadth.
Course closures and campus cuts are happening before the regulatory framework is even operational, raising urgent questions about learner protection. Senedd elections in 2026 add further uncertainty. The NUS Cymru President will need to build relationships with a new regulatory body, engage with a potentially new Welsh Government, and advocate for students across a sector that spans universities, colleges and apprenticeships in a way the other UK nations are only beginning to attempt.
Chai Yiu Melody Lin from Swansea is the current Welfare Officer (and former Women’s Officer), a Welsh-Hongkonger activist who founded the Swansea-Abertawe HongKonger CIC, served as a district councillor assistant in Hong Kong, and has delivered oral evidence at United Nations hearings.
Regular engagement with the Welsh Government’s higher education minister and local authorities to represent and advocate for students’ priorities.
She wants Welsh language and history modules across all degree programmes, equal funding and clear progression paths for Welsh-medium courses, and action on misogyny and night-time campus safety.
Secure equal funding, ensure the quality of teaching, and clear progression paths for Welsh-medium courses.
Progress depends on maintaining strength, learning from previous officers, and building long-term pressure for change.
Jennifer Taylor from Trinity Saint David Students’ Union is also standing for the role. At the time of writing a manifesto had not been published, so we are unable to set out her platform.
Her nominators come from Cardiff University, Coleg Sir Gâr/Coleg Ceredigion, and Bangor – a spread across HE and FE and across Welsh-speaking and English-speaking Wales that suggests a breadth of support.
NUS-USI President
In Northern Ireland years of Stormont instability have left the sector with frozen funding, policy drift, and a student finance system increasingly out of step with changes elsewhere.
The dual NUS-USI/USI membership structure creates unique cross-border dynamics with the Republic, and the FE sector in Northern Ireland has particular structural challenges around union independence and financial support for learners.
Whoever takes this role will need to move the organisation from reacting to crises towards building the kind of sustained structural advocacy that can survive the next period of political disruption.
Amy Smith from Queen’s University Belfast is the current QUB SU President. Her manifesto is framed explicitly around the shift from reactive to strategic – she wants a fundamental review of FE student financial support, apprenticeships championed as equal pathways, financial support reflecting real living costs, sustained funding for campus food programmes, and mandatory consent education.
Move us from crisis response to structural change.
Apprentices must be treated as workers and learners, not cheap labour.
Her insistence on FE union independence speaks to a specific Northern Irish context where that autonomy is not always a given, and her focus on building partnerships beyond campus suggests an outward-facing approach.
Ensure student representatives shape our approach and engage partners beyond campus to improve safety.
Mark Brashier from South Eastern Regional College is the Student Governor and Union President, bringing an FE perspective and experience of institutional governance. His manifesto is detailed and policy-heavy.
Giving me a strong understanding of how decisions made in boardrooms affect students on the ground.
He wants FE funded on equal terms with HE, grants uprated in line with inflation, enhanced protections for liberation groups, permanent food pantries and warm meal programmes, and a joint information platform for NI schools and colleges.
EMA and related support measures are essentially ‘stuck’ in government decision-making, with the risk of withdrawal or redesign before an adequate replacement is in place.
Urges government to examine how the social security system interacts with student finance, so that reforms to HE funding reduce rather than deepen poverty.
NUS Vice President Liberation and Equality
The UK-wide liberation role sits at the intersection of several live and highly charged policy areas. OfS’ prevalence survey has produced stark data on sexual misconduct in English HE, but questions remain about provider-level transparency and the survey’s limited coverage of international PGTs and postgraduate researchers.
In Wales, Medr’s proposed regulatory approach has no comparable standalone condition on gender-based violence. The Employment Rights Act will from October 2026 strengthen harassment protections, and there are active campaigns around trans rights, conversion therapy, misogyny as a hate crime, and divestment.
This is a role that demands someone who can turn principled commitments into practical organising – building the capacity of SUs to do liberation work rather than simply issuing statements from the centre.
Avery Greatorex from UCLan is a part-time officer who has used community organising techniques to build trans mutual-aid networks and coordinate a national campaign against conversion therapy. They want to challenge racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism, push the government to end conversion therapy, create an accessibility checklist with disabled students, and lobby for misogyny to be made a hate crime.
Instead of writing performative statements, I will create spaces where difficult conversations can happen safely and activists are given the tools to win.
Their approach is rooted in equipping activists with practical tools and creating spaces for difficult conversations.
Strengthen training and political literacy so students can recognise and challenge divisive narratives.”
Lobby national government to finally make misogyny a hate crime.”
Work with external charities and support networks to target national campaigns based on student data.”
Gawdham Melath from ARU has served as an elected student leader for two years and contributed to the One Voice and Come On In campaigns. His manifesto emphasises democratic governance and clear lines of accountability.
Staff across NUS and Students’ Unions do essential work but their role is to support, advise and enable. They are not there to set direction in place of elected student leaders.”
He wants to defend trans students “openly and without compromise” while challenging Islamophobia and antisemitism “clearly and consistently.”
Liberation is not symbolic. It is about power – who has it, and who doesn’t.
Ensure positions on global conflicts are rooted in clear democratic consultation and transparent decision-making.
John Rappa from Edinburgh University Students’ Association has spent two years as VP Activities and Services, securing £110k for free breakfast clubs and expanding financial aid to asylum seekers.
I will ally the student movement with local trades and tenant’s unions across the UK. The fight is not just ours, nor will it be won without broad union coordination.
They want a coordinated legal defence fund for mass non-compliance with anti-trans legislation, to ally the student movement with trades and tenants’ unions, and to campaign against Prevent.
Coordinated legal defence fund for mass non-compliance with anti-trans legislation.
Parliamentarians only meet sabbs when convenient for their schedules. It’s about time they remember how powerful and annoying we can be.
Kunal Chavan from University College Birmingham is a second-year sabbatical officer and Board of Governors member who secured free period products and a permanent prayer space.
Lobby the OfS to include neurodiversity metrics in Access and Participation Plans, making accountability binding, not voluntary.
His manifesto includes a Neurodiversity Liberation Working Group, Liberation Informed Counselling Standards for all universities, student-staffed Liberation Legal Clinics supervised by equality law solicitors, and an AI bias report commissioned with the Alan Turing Institute.
Partners with law schools and organisations to launch student-staffed Liberation Legal Clinics supervised by equality law solicitors.
Campaign for universities to report identity-disaggregated mental health data to the OfS, creating binding accountability.
