 So it gives me great pleasure to invite Professor Sally Varnum to present the next session titled Student Voice to Partnership in Aotearoa, New Zealand, Fidi Angovao and onwards. And I do apologize if I have mispronounced that title. Sally has recently retired from the University of Technology Sydney where she was the Professor of Law Chair of the University Academic Board and a member of the UTS Council. Her recent research concentrates on the role of student voice in tertiary institution, decision making and governance. A national senior teaching fellow, she published Creating a Framework for Student Partnership in University Decision Making and Governance and similar papers for the student voice Australia. So Sally will be facilitating this session. So without further ado, welcome and thank you Sally for joining us. Thank you so much for coming and Phil. It's great to be here. First of all I'd like to offer my congratulations to Phil and her team for carrying student voice Australia forward so well despite all the setbacks with COVID and whatever it's been. It's great to see it in such good heart. I'd also like to offer our huge thanks to Phil, Rebecca, Piper, Chantel and Kate for organizing this symposium and for having us. I don't intend to do too much talking because it is all about the students and I have, I will introduce you in a minute to the students who are here with me but we will just go through, I'm not going to read the power points. I'm just going to go through them and really leave it to the students to do most of the talking, I hope. I'm sure they will, they're great. So Tena koutou, Tena koutou, Tena koutou koutou. The student, the people I have here with me are first of all Alice Mander who is the president of the National Disabled Students Association. Alice is the founder of that association and it has done a fantastic job in getting it all together and up and running. Secondly, Andrew LaSalle who's the president of the, he's on Zoom at another location, he's in Auckland. Andrew is the current president of the New Zealand Union of Students Associations and he comes from the sector which is now called Tupu Kinga which is part of the polytechnic system. And thirdly, but not least of course, Jason. Jason Finow who's the president of Toyota Pacifica, the current president. I also have with me from the ministry who have been very involved in the work in New Zealand. I'm supporting the work in New Zealand, Julie Keenan and Lauren Bale who are part of the tertiary education policy group. And it's very exciting for me to be talking here and to also to be joined by all these people. It's wonderful. I became involved in the work when I came back to New Zealand largely through my contacts with New Zealand students who had been to various Student Voice Australia events and through Sheila Matia, the AQA director who had been over two hours and it has been great for me to become involved as part of the team in moving forward to actualise, to establish the principles and actualise Student Voice to partnership in New Zealand. There has been, I have to say, a lot of work going on in New Zealand over the years so it hasn't come as a new idea but the push with the ministry supporting and the students doing a huge amount of work, the mahi by the students has been fantastic and I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But first of all I'm going to ask our students, I don't know who would like to go first, the understanding of Student Voice to partnership from the perspective of their particular cohorts that they represent. So first of all Andrew, where has Andrew gone? I'm here of course my colleagues through me in first so Kia ora koutou katoa. I'm Andrew LaSalle. I'm the National President of the New Zealand Union Student Associations and I'm from the politics sector or the vocational education and training sector originally. So I'm the second ever president in the USA to come from that sector. So for me, Student Partnership is about students not merely being a token voice in the room, not merely being that one voice on an academic committee on a panel on a board, but actually being involved and included in every decision that is made by an institute, not merely a voice that says something very articulate, says something that really connects with students and then gets ignored by the other nine voices in the room. To me, Student Partnership is learners actually being engaged in every step of their tertiary education journey from, you know, from their education to their campuses, to their lives, to their accommodation, students actively being engaged with and means that are accessible and inclusive and students actually having a voice that is respected, that is listened to, that is held with sort of equal mana to the voice of the institution. So students making up half of committees if that is the right place for them to be, students actively having a voice in everything that the tertiary institution does and students having a right to co-design what their institutions do as well, students being recognised as the reason tertiary education exists, not as not as entities to be treated as a sort of passive object. So for me, Student Partnership is really just recognising the inherent rights and responsibilities that students have and the fact that they should be playing an active role in everything that happens in the tertiary education sector. Thank you, Andrew. That's great. Alice, do you have what we'd like to add to that? Kia ora everyone. Yes, as Alice said, I'm Alice. I'm the President of the National Disabled Students Association. We define disabled as an interaction between a person's impairment and particular social barriers that they may come up against. So we include physical disability, learning disabilities, neurodiversity, mental illness, chronic illness, and basically all the umbrella that includes disability. Yeah, so I guess partnership student from student voice to student partnership for me is really about facilitating equitable participation. So I think a lot of the time, you know, students kind of ask their opinion or there's this notion of consultation for a lot of students, particularly students with different disabilities, the ways in which that is done is extremely inaccessible. So, you know, there's 100 page documents or meetings that are just inaccessible in themselves. So I think meaningful partnership is really about taking away any barriers that individuals may face when it comes to actual participation. So yeah, that to me is what partnership is about. It's also about nothing about us without us, which is particularly pertinent for the disabled community. So a lot of the time, we're not actually the ones who speak up about our own needs. And we're trying to shift that so people actually ask the disabled students what they want as opposed to staff. So that's really important about all decisions that impact us made with our partnership and our consultation. That's great. Thank you. Thanks, Alice. And Jason. Kirana Marloni, Tamfalava, I want to say greetings. I'm Jason, the president for Turiua Pacifica, which is the national Pacific students or tertiary association for Pacific students. So for me in terms of student voices, student partnership, really what it's about. And this is coming from a specific perspective, really just understanding on a base level, just on the roots of it, understanding what students are. And if everyone comes into a situation where you've got the institution as well as people, making sure that everyone has a full understanding of the whole person, not just the circumstances of what's happening at university, but actually understanding their background, their culture, everything that they bring with them because of community, their family, their village, their church, their communities. That's about that. That's really what student voices and partnership means to me is having everyone in the room understanding fully what they're supposed to do and giving effect to what we call here in New Zealand doing is at the center. So giving effect to their statement and our tertiary education strategy by the Ministry of Education by actually allowing students to be their whole selves in any place that they're in. So yeah, I think everyone's sort of covered most of it. Great. Thank you, Jason. That was a great start. So first of all, what I was really going to talk about today or lead the talk on is hearing their voices in the sector, which is our first, second slide, which I think is about to come up. What has been happening here? First of all, I was first alerted to what was going on in New Zealand when I was looking at international, international moves for student voice and student partnership as part of my, first of all, the project that preceded my fellowship. And I discovered that there had been in 2013 a report student voice and tertiary education settings quality systems in practice, which was prepared for Aiko Aotearoa, which is the National Center for Tertiary Teaching Excellent and the New Zealand Union of Students Associations. So I started with that. What's happening now is that there were more, more moves in policy towards including or emphasizing the goal of learners as partners in Tato Anamata of Aiko Aotearoa, which is strategic goal for evaluating learners as partners, their voice for voices, experience and aspirations. And the academic quality agency for New Zealand universities and their enhancement themes are taking a more partnership approach. And now, and now there is underway draft legislation, Education, Pastoral Care of Tertiary and International Students Code of Practice outcome to very clearly states emphasizes learner voice, hearing, heeding and embedding learners voices in relevant education provision, decision-making and governance. So that's the background really to the work that was done by the students at the end of last year supported by the ministry and what is now known as Friya Nadal student voice to partnerships. And the money was driven by student leaders and supported by the ministry of education. And it was for me, that was the point that I became involved. I was asked to be part of the team. And it was a fantastic experience for me to work with all the great students from student leaders from across New Zealand, from different areas of different cohorts, different student organizations in New Zealand. And it was, as I said, a great experience. And this is I'm just going to quickly run through it because I can make it available. But also the rest of the slides show how it was set up. So we have had a, had a kiki, which is a, I have to say, as a New Zealander, I really, I'm, I'm learning today. I've discovered that in the 13 years that I was in Australia, there has been a huge movement towards today or Māori language being spoken everywhere. And I'm really struggling to catch up. So I'm hoping that my students and ministry people put me right on pronunciation if I get it wrong. Okay. So the Havikiki, which is the picture in front of you, is a flax bush with the idea of the roots and then the, the growth coming up. And there is four, the Havikiki model of student provider partnerships has four bases, bases, if could you move on? I think, yeah, the screen isn't sharing properly. So they're going to do it on their end. But yeah, they seem to be sharing it. Okay. So the idea of the, just to go back a step, the idea of the mahi that led to the Whirianara was for, as I think to be presented as a gift to the, to the sector, to, for students to really work through what was important to them and their student voice to partnership. And it has, it has as well as the principles that are set out, the four, the four principles and then what goes underneath them as you'll see on the PowerPoint as we go through. But also within the Whiria sections, making it real and progressing partnership stories from students, from Toyota students, which is not just about something that's aspirational, but of course it is aspirational, but also that it has a means towards actualization in the, in the sector. And that is, that's what's moving forward now. But just to go back a step. So we have the first one, which Lauren is now going to put on. Oh, you're doing it. Okay. Progressing from student voice to strong partnerships. The first one is, who would like to pronounce that for me? So one, sorry, that's the second one. Building connections with each other. And you'll see on the, on the slide, which you have, which is the, sorry, I've moved on to the second slide, haven't I? The first, yeah, the first slide is paka, pakaari, strengthening student voices. And if you have a look at that slide, you will see the points under that, which are developing approaches to the learning environment, making plans, office requests to support the student voice, etc. If we then move on to the next one, it is building connections with each other, engaging way in ways that honor the treaty of Waitangi, which is the treaty of Waitangi, which is a huge, the core of everything that we do in New Zealand, engaging in ways that honor the treaty. And students are expected of values of the experts as being students, connections are mutually beneficial, etc. I won't read through them because you will have these slides made available to you. Is that right, Kamin? Yeah. The next one is akaranga, learning with and from each other. And the fourth one is mahi, tahi, working together, which is important, which is, to me, a hugely important point to get to as we work through all of these different, the different principles. Tota students and providers developing ideas and solutions together. I mean, the old view, the view that we came from way back then was that the universities or the providers develop the views and then they ask students. And I think the whole, the approach now in Australia and here and in Scotland and Ireland and everything is now working together from the beginning. And I think this really emphasizes that. So that's a really brief summary. I don't know, we're quite at the end, you know, because we've got a bit of students. That's the video and really brief summary. And now we're moving forward on that. It's not a directive, but the idea is it's to be used by providers and students to progress the conversation. So I'm now going to ask the students, the students with me again, how do you see working and partnership with your institutions and sector bodies benefits you and the sector? Who would like to go first, Alice? Sure. So I think we all know that there's a lot of inequities in the tertiary space for disabled students or New Zealand Māori students and Pacifica students. I think that student voice is key to meeting a lot of these issues. I know that when I speak to disabled students, a lot of the issues that we commonly think are an issue about funding or these huge issues we don't know what to do with students have a really simple solution because they know what works for them. And I think that is what we can get out of something like Whitingādo is that providers can really serve students and get to that step before all these barriers happen and before we reach to a place of crisis where a relationship is completely broken down. So yeah, I think it's crucial both on providers and students just in terms of student success and their entire experience of education. It's really good. Thank you, Alice. It's also good that I was going to ask the next question, but I can see we're going to run out of time. So if you could include, as Alice said, how you see Whitingādo working from here on with your providers in your particular areas, and I think that you touched on that, which was great. Shall we leave it at that, Jason? So from a Pacific perspective, because we're in this sort of precarious position where we are a minority, but we're not part of, you know, we sort of, yeah, we always get lumped with our Māori counterparts. And I do want to acknowledge that we're, that Te Manahākaua National Māori Students Association did on Whitingādo as well. We're not treaty partners, so we're always in this position of how do we best sort of give effect to student voices, student partnership. And so for us, it's really advocating on a level that works. So one of the four pillars of, I guess, of Whitingādo and what I referenced to earlier is akuranga, learning with and from each other. So it's sort of just using a lot, you know, alongside our partner organisations of the National Disabled Students and New Zealand Students Association, akuranga, just sort of almost when I talk about sort of like shared inheritance. So just coming into a space as students, but also understanding that we each walk different paths and making sure that we all understand each other so we can empower each other as well because that's really what we try to do in student voice here in New Zealand is really empower students and student organisations to be able to partner with their universities. Because it's actually using, what do you think about akuranga learning with and from each other? Learning from instances, we say something happened in Auckland that can be used somewhere down here in Wellington or somewhere in Christchurch. So it's making sure that we actually all work together to support, you know, because we students shouldn't work in silos. We should always be working together to advance the needs of students because that really will give effect to learners at the centre, which we love to say in New Zealand. That's where we're heading apparently. No, no, we are. So yeah, giving effects to that. But yeah, that's it. Thank you, Jason, Andrew. Yeah, I think for me one of the reasons when we were developing Fideonaro, one of the reasons that we did adopt the Hadakeke model of sort of the flax leaves going out and learners being at the centre was because it was quite a good visualisation from Te Aumaldi. It was quite a good visualisation of how we want learners to be treated in the sector and how partnership does actually help institutions and students. Because if you put learners at the centre of their education, if you make the education system work around learners as partners rather than students having to work around a tertiary system that simply doesn't meet their needs, simply doesn't identify or help them with those needs. If you actually build the system with students at the centre and everything supporting them around them, you know, looking after students, making sure their voices are being heard, that's the only way you actually achieve equitable outcomes for students. That's the only way you can reduce and eliminate barriers. And that is why we chose that Hadakeke model of students being at the centre of actually trying to figure out how we can put students at the centre, but also ensure that there is support there. And for me, that's what partnership and institutions will look like, is students will be able to work with their institutions to identify their needs, you know, to identify solutions, because students are the expert at being students. No one can take that away from them. No one can deny them that right. And for me, that is a game changer. If we actually get our systems from the ground up to recognise that every single step through a learner's journey in the education system, from the moment they think about going to university or polytechnic, to when they're in the study, to when they're going out and getting careers, if they are at the centre of every part of that process and engaged in inclusive and equitable ways to hear their voice, to share their voice and to empower their voice, we get a better education outcome for everyone who goes through the system. And I think the next steps for me, the most exciting next step we're having in our town is the creation of Tsipuking, which is the new national polytechnic that is being created in New Zealand for vocational education and training. It is merging 16 different regional polytechnics into one national network of provision, which is going to have 200,000 learners across the system and is going to be the 35th biggest tertiary institution in the world. And in this creation of Tsipuking, there's been a recognition that the current system doesn't work with students. The current system doesn't meet their needs. The current system simply is unequitable, unjust and full of barriers that shouldn't be there. And Tsipuking have committed to learners at the centre. And I think if we adopt Fidianado as the document throughout all of Tsipuking, that does guide the creation of this new institute from the ground up. And we actually embed learners at the centre of it. We will have a tertiary education system that will, quite frankly, could possibly be the best in the world if we can have a system that truly works around learners and works with learners, recognises the diversity of the challenges in their lives that they experience, and actually equitably upholds the mana of those students and really empowers them in everything they do. I think that could be a game changer, not just for Aotearoa, but for the entire world. And I think for me, that is the fantastic thing that we've got with Fidianado is we have this opportunity, this guiding document to help frame what partnership looks like in New Zealand. We start with the polytechnics. We then look at how universities can be involved in this process. And universities are adopting this framework as well. And then going forward, we can look at how we can help that, how we can grow that, not just in New Zealand, but outside perhaps even as well. Thank you, Andrew. So you really touched on it. So we're true from here. It's interesting that there is now the word is out in the sector much more. The sector agencies have become much more engaged with the work from Fidianado. There's now really the need for a national conversation, which we're hopefully moving out into, but there's a lot of work going on. Andres talked about to picking up, but there is, I'm aware of a lot of work going on at Victoria University to develop principles for their use for student voice to partnership within the university, within decision making in governance at that university. Massey University is now, I think they have to clear themselves that they want to be the leader in student voice in New Zealand. And they have appointed staff to move this forward. University of Canterbury now has a student partnership agreement, which I think is the first in New Zealand. So there is the starting with starting with the buzz before Fidia, then the work that's gone into Fidia and the students, the amazing understanding of the students and the motivation that they have to move this forward has been fantastic. And I think that that kind of buzz is going out into the sector and watch the space really. I'm just aware of time. Do we have to, are we, I was going to ask the students to have a last word, but how are we going for time coming? Yep, you're doing great. So you've got a couple more minutes. A couple more minutes. I might have to leave Andrew off if we've only got a couple more. I'll give you, how does like, how does five? The last word. So the next thing is, as I said, the buzz out in the sector, getting the conversation going, the most important thing is, as everybody knows from what the work that was done in Australia, is to reach a common understanding in the sector of what we're talking about when we talk about student voice to partnership, because that's in student engagement. And Austin talked a lot about this as well, that progression from student voice that a lot of institutions would say, we have student voice, we have feedback, and we have consultations. But my answer to that has always been, but what do you do with that? And the next thing is, it's the student engagement, as Ocean said, and then student partnership. And I think that it is a progression that we're moving, that we're moving through. And I think that Fidia has given a great basis for that. The idea is, with the stories at the end, making the making a real section and progressing partnership stories where the students gave their talk about their experiences and their different institutions of working in partnership or trying to and reflecting on what worked well and what didn't, what went wrong, is a hugely important step within Fidia. And the idea is that the plan is to work with progressive students and student leaders to add to that, to make it to make it real, to actualise it rather than just having it as aspirational. Okay, one quick comment from my wonderful student team here. Um, I guess, no, I think the, there's just real excitement just to see how this progresses into and how it sort of, you know, permits through our tertiary education system. Of course, we're going through some big changes. So I guess, yeah, just really looking out for how those changes can really give effect to learners at the centre. Yeah. Yeah, I guess mine would just be that it's good to be in the room and at the table. And I really hope to see that on my friends across the ditch. I also able to kind of get disabled student voice up and running because we are an underserved population group here in the tertiary sector. And it's our time to shine. I think it's great. Yeah. Alice has done an amazing job giving the Association up and running here. So the challenge is out there, anyone who's listening in Australia to do the same. Um, Andrew? Yeah, I think, um, as you can probably tell, I'm incredibly excited by the opportunity we have with Fidionado to really embed student partnership and everything tertiary institutions do. As I said, we've got a fantastic opportunity to puking it to build a network of education that has student, student partnership embedded from the ground up. We also have a fantastic opportunity to see how our other institutions that already exist can change to better embed this. But I think the only reason we're at this point, and the only reason we have Fidionado in the state it is, and the only reason we are getting it adopted by the sector and really listen to is because when we went through this process, we tried our utmost to empower and include every student voice there is in the room, not just have choking students. So for me, the real takeaway from here is the way we embed and create student partnerships is by engaging in student partnership and we're designing frameworks like this, making sure that we have in the New Zealand context, making sure we have national student voice, making sure we have Maori student voice, Pacifica student voice, disabled student voice, student voices from institutions like politics that often go on who, international students embedded throughout that. And that for me that is that is partnership is being inclusive with the voices that we hear from and hearing from as many as possible. I can see Mamarora there. I was just going to say the reason why we don't have representation from a Maori student here is because she is in the next session, which is great. So we look forward to listening to her. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. It's been great to be able to share the New Zealand experience with Australia from the side of the Tasman for me, especially it's but it's very quite moving. But thank you for having us. And thank you to my students for their wonderful words. Yes, thank you very much guys for joining us. So yeah, thanks to Sally, Andrew, Alice, Jason and Judy and Lauren there as well. So thanks for coming along. I just a quick comment from one of our attendees said how much they love that Flax model and that students are the expert at being students. So therefore that centric aspect of how you build that up. And that's actually where diversity comes from, ensuring that there's that diverse voice being heard. And I'm really looking forward to what you guys are going moving forward. You got some big steps going forward. So it's great. I'm going to