This Partnership Agreement outlines the shared purpose, values, principles and practices that underpin the working relationship between the University of Portsmouth (UoP) and University of Portsmouth Students’ Union (UPSU) as the recognised channel for the student voice ensuring impactful collaboration, meaningful co-creation and robust independence. It should be read in conjunction with the UoP Student Voice Policy, the UPSU Code of Practice and the shared Financial Memorandum of Understanding. It also acknowledges that the relationship between the University and the SU is governed by appropriate regulation and legislation, including the requirements of the 1994 Education Act, the 2018 Data Protection Act and UK GDPR regulation with regard to data sharing.
The Union will use this agreement to help inform annual elected officer and student representative training and working practices, to act as a check and balance when campaigning and acting as agents for change, and to steer the unique relationship with the University upholding the principles of both partnership and independence.
The University will use this agreement to integrate the purpose and activity of the Union’s representatives (student reps, Officers and staff) in quality assurance, governance, project development, innovation and decision-making - where it impacts students - and set expectations throughout the teaching and support service staff teams to embed.
Shared Purpose
UoP & UPSU commit to ensuring that UoP student experience, learning and teaching, development and support is consistently outstanding, and leads to excellent outcomes. We do this through the following shared areas of work:
- Academic excellence - high quality teaching in a valuable course portfolio with high-quality resources
- Effective representation of students’ interests - supporting the democratic election of student officers of UPSU and ensuring effective representation of students’ interests in all aspects of the student journey.
- Active Inclusion - seeking out and removing biases and barriers to enable students to be their whole selves through University studies and life: feeling safe, seen, heard and valued
- Student Voice - co-creation in courses, participation in developing wider University experience and representative voices in decision, change making, quality and governance
- Student Experience - belonging, development & participation opportunities and activities, spaces, places that enhance and enrich the ways that students connect with their University journey
- Welfare and Wellbeing - removing barriers, embedding proactive mechanisms and providing responsive support offers to enable students to stay and thrive at University
- Future Readiness - both integrated and co-curricular options, explicitly focussing students on development for employment pathways and accessible opportunities to build the skills, knowledge and experience they need
We agree that UoP’s distinct value includes:
- Excellent teaching and learning resources
- Expert academic & support structures
- Commitment to widening access and participation
- Research-rich teaching and support
- Embedded engagement with students
- Power to enact change
- Influence for the benefit of students in the city, region, and sector
- Power to support civic engagement for the benefit of students
- Breadth and depth of reach in support of student experience
We agree that UPSU’s distinct value includes:
- Independent organisation - a unique connection with students
- Expert student representation
- Elevating engagement with excellent co-curricular and course related development opportunities
- Championing student rights
- Equity of impact for students, whatever their background or needs
- Pace, Agility & Responsiveness to enact change
- Influence - amplifying student voices and mobilising student communities
- Approachability (peer)
Shared Principles - together we will:
- Trust that we share a commitment to acting in the best interests of our students
- Value and enable our own, and each other's, individual roles, remits and areas of expertise
- Embrace our independent perspectives, distinct structures and differing cultures
- Undertake challenge with respect and be solution-focussed when things go wrong
- Be proactive, timely and open in collaboration: information, ideas, developments and decisions
- Harness the power of each organisation for best benefit
- Commit to maintaining strong collaboration
Our Practices
UPSU will act as the independent student voice, agents for change and enhancers for students experience at UoP:
- Providing offers and services that add value to, remove barriers to, or continuously improve the University
- Finding common ground and shared challenges
- Facilitate understanding of legacy and onward action
- Providing relevant evidence or data
- Representing the whole student-body
- Engaging in identifying common issues and finding solutions
- Providing challenge to move faster on agreed goals, and keeping live issues where opinions differ
In all aspects of university activity that impact on students the University will commit to delivering excellence, working with UPSU, its Elected Officers, reps (and staff) as the recognised channel for the student voice:
- Building a culture of openness and collaboration with UPSU, Elected Officers and student representatives
- Ensuring full consideration of student opinion in decision making, wherever it impacts students
- Listening to, and responding in a timely way to what UPSU, students, reps and Elected Officers say
- Sharing relevant evidence and data and supporting research into student outcomes and experience
- Representing the UoP student experience at appropriate sector forums
- Advocating for UoP students within our spheres of civic and political influence
Our shared practices:
- Openness and transparency in the way we work together as a partnership.
- Co-creation at all levels, from our courses and services to our senior leaders.
- Joined-up academic and pastoral support.
- Connecting emerging student priorities to ongoing university workstreams
- Commitment to developing a sense of belonging and community for all Portsmouth students.
- Providing forums that give voice to the many different student experiences
- Being comfortable with difficult truths
- Accepting responsibility for decisions that disadvantage students
- Revisiting decisions once made where new evidence arises about the impact on students
Methods of delivery
University and Union organisation level involvement:
- An independent Student Representation system embedded in quality assurance frameworks
- Student Union membership and staff observers to participate in committees across the decision-making structure of the University
- Student Union involvement in University Task and Project Groups from concept to completion, wherever they impact students
- Student Union involvement in portfolio and periodic review processes, including membership of review teams, where appropriate
- Student Union involvement in development, review and approval of University strategies and policy, wherever they impact students
- UEB liaison regarding Union strategy and annual aims
- Student Voice Policy and action plans
University and Union project and operational level involvement:
- Embedding in operational planning structures of the University such as Annual Monitoring exercises
- Mechanisms throughout the University to ensure Students Union involvement in all student-facing major, and change, projects wherever they impact on students
- Regular senior leadership meetings to link emerging student matters to senior and operational decision makers
- Joint working statements between operational partnerships, eg Sport and Recreation, Student Life, Global
- Linked or parallel operational policies (eg safeguarding, complaints) to support interdependent case management
University and Union student level involvement:
- Academic Rep meetings and engagement
- Peer Support Schemes
- Student Awards
- Student-centred activities from Academic Societies to collaborative events
- Engagement events and campaigns for marginalised and underrepresented students including those with protected characteristics