After a year in the relative distance from the traditional sector under the more radical leadership of Malia Bouattia, a moderate-backed slate led by new President Shakira Martin was elected at NUS National Conference in 2017. The eclectic and lively Martin, formerly NUS Vice President for Further Education, is only the second NUS President to have attended a further education college instead of university. She has lived a truly inspiring story of the power of education to break a background of hardship and poverty in south-east London. She will be an effective and media-friendly spokesperson for NUS, but her policy focus will mainly be directed towards her passion for FE.
Thus she is accompanied on our list by the softly spoken and calculatingly intelligent Amatey Doku, the new Vice President for Higher Education and former President of Cambridge University Students’ Union. Doku will lead NUS’s policy engagement with sector and has declared his willingness to thoroughly engage with vice chancellors. But with tuition fees firmly back on the national political agenda, NUS’s influence could be wider this year than it has been for some years. Both Martin and Doku will become familiar faces to many working in the sector.