In a meeting held on Thursday 14th January 2010, Senate approved two motions put forward by KSU.

The first one deals with the Education Act Report. In this report KSU’s Education Commissioner, Karl Agius had pointed out that up to this date there were still boards of academic nature which did not have any members representing the student body. The Programme Validation Committee (PVC), was earmarked for this purpose.

PVC is a standing sub-committee of Senate and has replaced the Senate Sub-Committee on Approval of Courses and Regulations. Senate has now appointed KSU Education Coordinator and Senate Representative Roberta Rizzo to sit on this board. The Education Act Report was published in September 2009 by the Education Commission and can be downloaded from the resources page of the KSU portal. A copy of this report has also been sent to the Minister of Education.

Moreover, in the first weeks of January, KSU pointed out to Senate some problems that arose with regards to past papers. Earlier on this year KSU had to remove the past papers from the KSU portal due to the fact that some members from the academic staff had claimed that this was Intellectual Property belonging to University and which could not be disseminated. In addition to this, KSU also found that access to these papers was quite limited in a number of centres, faculties or institutes.  Nevertheless, KSU still believed these to be an essential study tool, and thus it pushed for a uniform policy to be adopted for the dissemination of past papers, or model papers where the former are not available.  KSU believed that these resources should be made available for all students, and for free.

Senate has taken up this proposal and through a decision taken on the 14th of January, University now has a formal commitment that past papers should be made available online and for free.