This study is to investigate student representatives’ perceptions of student voice in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). With Neoliberalism as a leading conceptual framework, it is expected to find out answers of the following research questions: (1) to what degree the student representation systems in HEIs work to promote student voice; (2) and assist HEIs to become more accountable to students? (3) how underlying diversity issues affect representing student voice?

Against the backdrop of Neoliberalism, tensions between managerialist approaches to quality assurance and socio-political commitments to democracy and citizenship, can be witnessed both in educational literature and practice (Carey, 2013; Matthews & Dollinger, 2022). Student voice advocates assume students are competent social agents and have a right to democratic participation in educational settings (Bourke & Loveridge, 2014). However, along with the prevalence of New Public Management, student voice nowadays is much used as a potential contributor to quality improvement in educational settings, rather than prioritising the democratic rights of students as young citizens (Thomson & Gunter, 2006). In other words, the emphasis on student voice currently is driven primarily through imperatives of marketised accountability (Fielding, 2001), which emphasises pre-determined objectives and foreseeable outputs (Blanco Ramírez, 2013). 

In this case, engaging student voice has been critiqued as an instrumentalist technology associated with compliance and productivity (Bragg, 2007). This powerful impetus that position students as consumers, data sources, and tools for quality control can miss the emancipatory potential of their voice (Charteris & Smardon, 2019), because the essential characteristics of voice work—"dialogic, intergenerational, collective, and inclusive” (Pearce & Wood, 2019, p.118)—are often difficult to observe from the current voice discourse.

Student representative system, as one important component of the accountability regime in HEIs in the UK, is designed to collect student voice formally by elected representatives and transit voice from students to a multilevel of staff in institutions. It is faced with a number of difficulties in creating the conditions for such a student empowerment (Pearce & Wood, 2019). The responses from institutions (Carey, 2013), the time-bounded nature of dealing with student voice (Flint & O'Hara, 2013), complex motivations of student representatives (Seale, 2016) are all affecting the progress and validity of transiting student voice from students to institutions through representatives. 

Moreover, the neoliberal notion of students as consumers is likely to reshape the relationships between student representatives and their institutions (Flint & O'Hara, 2013), where there has been an increasing convergence of the consumerist values and priorities between them (Brooks, Byford & Sela, 2016). Representatives are blamed for regulating themselves to align with existing structures, rather than challenging them (Pearce & Wood, 2019), from which the general student body tend to view their representatives as being co-opted by the institutions (QAAS, 2018), rather than creating a dialogical environment for authentic student voice. The legitimate positions that students should be entitled in this neoliberal environment imply the enactment of a representative role (Lizzio & Wilson, 2009), and this is also an essential question to answer for positioning student voice. 

Considerable studies have been conducted in school settings to explore student representation issues in school governance, while there is insufficient discussion about this in the HE context. It particularly lacks investigations of students’ views of accountability, which can inform and deepen our understanding of student voice mechanisms based on their personal experience. In the UK, where there is a diverse student composition, it is also possible to get various insights. 

Thus, this research uses questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect student representatives’ perceptions of HE’s accountability to student voice in the UK. Data collection and analysis will be carried out after March 2023. 

As a mix-method study, a questionnaire is designed and sent out to potential participants, followed by semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire contains Likert Scale questions, multiple-choice questions, and open-ended questions. Quantitative questions are to gain a numerical description of student voice accountability from student representatives’ perceptions, such as “I think my institution responds to student voice. (choose from strongly disagree to strongly agree)”. Open-ended questions are to collect some personal experiences of student representatives about student voice operation, for example, “How important do you think student representative system is for student voice? What are the weakness and strengths of it?”. After analysing the questionnaire data, follow-up interviews are conducted to get an in-depth understanding of student representatives’ opinions. Ethics application had been made to seek the protection of participant rights and data security. After receiving approval from the ethics committee, inquiry emails are to be sent out to find potential participants. Nine HE institutions (three in England; three in Scotland; three in Wales and North Ireland) are planned to be contacted. Convenience sampling is employed, because in each institution, the way student representatives work and be exposed to the public are different, which can create difficulties in finding the right person to communicate with in some cases. For some universities such as the University of Glasgow, Student Representative Council are accessible, and one University has a specific vice-president in their Student Union—called “Vice-president of student voice”. These institutions will be communicated further, but relevant information is barely found in a few universities, which have to be excluded from the mailing list. It aims to get no more than 300 questionnaires and less than 20 interviews. After gaining the data, SPSS and thematic analysis will be used to analyse quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Both types of data will be combined together to answer the research questions: (1) to what degree the student representation systems in HEIs work to promote student voice; (2) and assist HEIs to become more accountable to students? (3) how underlying diversity issues affect representing student voice?

This study is expected to explore student representatives’ views and experience about student voice and HE accountability, including what kinds of voice can be heard, to what degree student voices are heard, and the effectiveness of student voice mechanisms in achieving accountability in HE institutions. It also aims to find out how student representatives work within a diverse discourse, where students differ in cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Findings assumed can not only show a general discussion of HE accountability to student voice, but also reflect how diversity influences student voice affairs, for example, whether international student reps have distinct expectations and perceptions of HE student voice. Engaging student voice will not become a solution to free education from problems, but it can help relevant agents to deal with education more maturely and thoughtfully (Cook-Sather, 2006). “Democracy invites us to take risks, which asks that we vacate the comfortable seat of certitude, remain pliable, and act, ultimately, on behalf of the common good” (Williams, 2004, p. 22). To make student voice authentic, it is a good time to consider stepping out of the influence of Neoliberalism and retrieving trust among relationships. It is not a matter of rushing for evidence to polish reports for marketing, rankings, and reputation, it is rather, as Bragg (cited by Fielding, 2001, p.107) calls for, when listening to student voice, “take our time with the anomalous, to allow what doesn't fit or produces unexpected reactions in us to disrupt our assumptions and habitual ways of working”.

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