CUSU President Evie Aspinall has criticised Chair of Office for Students Sir Michael Barber for his remarks during a meeting with her and several CUSU sabbatical officers on widening participation and on the Prevent duty, the government’s anti-radicalisation legislation which was introduced in 2015.

In a Facebook post on Monday, Aspinall expressed frustration at a meeting with Barber, who heads the OfS, a non-governmental regulatory body for higher education which was introduced earlier this year. She said that there were “still no answers on Prevent” offered, and “OfS [Office for Students] is obsessed with solving access problems with ‘crash courses’”.

She added, “some days this job is like hitting your head against a brick wall.”

Aspinall told Varsity that Barber adopted a “very old school manner” throughout the discussion on Prevent, where in response to her concerns of Prevent’s impact on student welfare, Barber offered “the same ‘safeguarding students’ bullshit answer.”

“His view on Prevent reminded me of when people say ’I’ve got a BME friend so I understand BME issues.”

Aspinall said that Barber had claimed to have spoken to “one imam” and as a result claimed to “understand the issues of Prevent.”

Aspinall said that she had wanted to talk about The Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF), Prevent and attainment gaps. The OfS has been tasked with implementing elements of TEF, which has proved controversial in its introduction of a new teaching quality measure in 2017. CUSU Education Officer Matt Kite and Graduate Union President Sofia Ropek Hewson were also present at the meeting.

According to Aspinall, she wasn’t able to discuss all of these matters because Barber spent much of the time talking about “widening participation” which she described as the OfS’s “big talking point” and that they see “Oxford and Cambridge to be the epitome for the need to widen participation.”

In July, the Office for Students called for Cambridge and Oxford to undergo a “robust evaluation” of whether its bursary system continues to tangibly improve access, saying that the University has “fallen short” in widening participation from underrepresented groups.

Speaking to Varsity, Aspinall said that Barber “listened to some extent” and that the meeting was beneficial for CUSU because they were able “to get our point across and hammer home that students don’t like the OfS, to the OfS.” She added, “If every [students’] union starts saying that, they might get the image.”

Commenting on the meeting, a spokesperson for the OfS said: “Sir Michael does not recognise this account of his meeting with Evie. He was pleased to meet Evie when he visited Cambridge and to have the chance to discuss ideas with her. He is always keen to engage with students when he visits universities.”

Aspinall also took issue with the approach of the OfS in lacking adequate student consultation, arguing that speaking to student union officers does not mean “you have engaged with students”, and further criticised the choice of student representative to the OfS board earlier this year being someone who “isn’t from the NUS”. 

A review published in March revealed a partisan approach in the recruitment process for the OfS board, where candidates’ views over free speech and Prevent were cited as “central reason” for the rejection of recommended student representatives to the role.