Dear Student Member,
The NUT Societies initiative aims to set up NUT Societies at Universities across England and Wales. The initiative started in January 2007 and so far we have 9 NUT societies.
Having a NUT Society at your University is a great way to support you and other teacher-training students during the course. The society can offer support on topics relevant to your training and can also be a forum where you and your course colleagues can discuss issues and best practice.
Being a member of an NUT Society means you can get to know other student teachers and share your passion and ideas about your future profession.
Most importantly, an NUT Society can be a catalyst for change in your courses and placements, as you will be able to campaign for issues that matter to you. This can be celebrating success in your courses, pushing for improvements, or raising awareness of wider issues.
It's easy to get involved, and once your society is up and running, you'll find it's social, fun, and looks great on your CV. Everything you need to know is here at the Student Centre, and if you have any more questions, please contact us at c.doyle@nut.org.uk and nutscholarship@nus.org.uk.
Best wishes
Carly Doyle, NUT Student Officer and Tobin Webb, NUS NUT Scholarship Holder 09/10
The best way to begin a NUT Society is to recruit a core group of interested students. Most societies start with a core of 2 or 3 committe members, so all you will need to do is find a couple of people to set the society up with you.
- The NUT will most probably have been on campus at Freshers and the local organiser will have a list of email addresses of those who have already joined. You can contact your local organiser here.
- If you have an approachable course tutor, you could ask them for 5 minutes at the end of a lecture to say something quickly about setting up a society, or you could print out some of the posters from this website asking volunteers to text or email you.
- Put a request out for volunteers in your Facebook status update, or create a group page.
- Or, you might be lucky enough to have several friends from teaching courses who all seem as interested in the idea as you are.
Once you have some volunteers, visit your Students' Union and pick up a Society Set Up pack. Each University has a different procedure, but usually you fill in the forms and specify the name and aims of your society and give some contact details of those people who are going to be organisers. If you have any queries on what to fill in, the SU will be happy to help.
You will also need a list of students who want to join the society. Again, this varies from Uni to Uni, but usually you need about 15 names. You can download sign up sheets from this website, or simply create your own. Most SUs require you to collect the students' names, student numbers and email addresses, so check what you need before asking people to get involved!
Another way to do this would be to send a group email out to all your course mates, and ask them to send their details back to you.
At this point, the SU will take your application to a committee meeting to pass it. Universities usually have a committee meeting every one or two weeks.
And that's it! Congratulations, you've set up your very own NUT Society!
At this point people can now join your society, so you will need to decide on a membership price, which is usually between £1 and £3 per student. For each student that you sign up, the SU will usually alsoadd a sum to your society's account.
The best place to start is with the list of interested students you collected earlier. The SU will walk you through collecting subs and distributing membership cards. If there is a Societies Fair scheduled, you could simply book a stall and get people signed up there.
