Question: How is the direction of the NUS going to change under your presidency?

Mandy Telford: Well, we've just recently decided our priority campaigns as a national executive and we're having three this year, normally we have two. One of them obviously is education funding, and it's still a huge issue for students and we're still lobbying the government to change the policy. We're waiting at the moment for them to announce their options paper, the problem is we don't actually know when the options paper is coming out, never mind what's going to be in the options paper. So, it is quite difficult for us to almost plan a proper campaign - it could be next week it could be September - we just don't know, that's the sort of difference. So we will be campaigning hard on student hardship, things like that.

The other one is a citizenship priority campaign, but engaging young people and trying to make them active citizens in their local communities. Obviously, we're as concerned as everyone else about young people not voting in general elections, and we'll be doing a lot of work on that.

The student movement we feel - obviously, citizenship is like a sort of a buzzword at the moment, the government is quite keen on it - we feel that the student movement has been doing a lot of that stuff for many, many years now because we have students already participating in democracy, in clubs and societies, engaging in their local community already, in their student communities.

It's about expanding that and it's also about transferring those skills actually onto a national scale, and saying, you know, 'you're getting involved on a local level, get involved on a national level because you can change things.' A lot of work with trade unions, things like that.

And then our third priority campaign is called 'making equality count' and it's all about fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, just basically discrimination issues and I think it's key this year, because we've seen the rise of the far right if you like, in France with Le Pen, and also the BNP is getting some council seats and they have been targeting campuses.

The BNP, Nick Griffin, has spoken at Cambridge University - not at the student union! The university, it turns out, didn't even know he was speaking there; it was fixed externally, things like that. But it's something, you know, with the Scottish Parliament elections coming up next year, the BNP are going to be targeting places in Scotland, things like that.

So we feel it is an important time to be doing things like that, as well as we're going to be producing stuff on defending the rights of asylum seekers, because we feel there has been some quite racist press whipped up against asylum seekers and it just doesn't - obviously it doesn't help, especially with the BNP, and they're also using these little tactics. So we said we're going to make that as our priority campaign, standing up for the rights of people.

Question: Why do you think so few young people vote?

Mandy Telford: I think they've been disconnected with politics - and when I say politics I mean politics with a big P - as in what happens at Westminster, because students are political, you know, young people they go on demonstrations. We sent out one email at Christmas saying, 'write to Tony Blair and tell him your plight', we got 3000 emails back, and thousands of them came back in 24 hours, so students are political, they are taking action.

Students are involved in Amnesty International, you know, equality campaigns. There were lots of students in Oldham trying to fight the BNP in that campaign. I think a lot of students just don't see what happens in Westminster as relevant to them. They see white, middle-aged men, if you like, standing on one side of a big room shouting at each other and saying, you know, 'honourable such-and-such', I think a lot of it is the language, and the tradition and everything isn't just accessible to young people.

Question: The government wants 50 per cent of young people going into higher education by 2010 - to what extent you think this should be altered to take into account the students' economic background?

Mandy Telford: Absolutely. I think it is - we are supporting this and I think the only way they can do it is to get students from poorer backgrounds. And that is actually what they want to do. Margaret Hodge said last week that the widening access agenda isn't working at the moment, because they have just widened it to people who were going to university anyway. They're getting more from the richer backgrounds rather than targeting those from poorer backgrounds. They're never going to reach it unless they encourage people from poorer backgrounds into university, as well as I think adult returners into education and to FE colleges.

It is a huge thing, it isn't just about universities, and we need to be looking at all post-16 education if they actually want to reach their target. Also we would say to them that on tuition fees, as a huge barrier, that they need to give students more money, because students from poorer backgrounds are just not willing to get themselves into this huge amount of debt, so they don't actually apply. They might say to us, 'well, 50 per cent of them don't pay tuition fees', but students coming from that background, they don't want to get into so much debt, they don't actually take that extra step into applying to university because they've got this great perception that they're going to have to pay fees and take out loans and all the rest of it.

Question: What do you hope to achieve from the review into student funding, given that Margaret Hodge has said that there will still be an element of student contribution?

Mandy Telford: We want to see upfront fees abolished, and we would like grants back for poorer students. We're after targeted grants, we don't believe we're asking for the moon. We're not asking for grants for everybody, but we want targeted grants for those who genuinely need it.

We also want to see targeted money for student parents and students with disabilities, mature students, all groups of people who are currently not accessing education - we believe that the government should be targeting money at them.

We just don't know what the government's going to come out with. We're dead set against a graduate tax, and we're dead set against commercial interest rate loans. That, we believe, would just hit students so hard, especially those students who go to university and end up working in the public sector, so teachers, nurses - they're not going to go into the City and earn a fortune, so that would really cripple them.

Question: Baroness Warwick of Universities UK described tuition fees as a side issue of student funding, that the main issue is student income and maintenance - to what extent do you agree with that?

Mandy Telford: I think all of it is integral, I think its tuition fees, student fees and the lack of a grant - it's all a package. Tuition fees are a perception issue, it's obviously asking students to pay for their education. With student loans there's an issue there that when they start being paid back, we would ask for the government to raise the threshold, it's currently £10,000. And there's actually no grant whatsoever to English students.

Question: Education minister Margaret Hodge said that she had no problem with students working part-time jobs - do you think that is the right approach?

Mandy Telford: Students, I think, in the 'good old days', when not many people went to university and they got grants, students still worked. We're not saying that students must not work while they are studying, they might want extra money. But what we're saying is students shouldn't have to work, and that's the issue, students are being forced into part time work. Some of them are working 40 hours a week plus trying to do their degree and keep up coursework. We've got lecturers telling us that students are falling asleep in classes and things like that, because they're working in clubs and obviously not getting home till four and then getting up in the morning. So, we don't have a problem with students working, but they shouldn't have to work.

Question: Where has the English campaign for changes in student funding been going wrong where Scottish and Welsh campaigns have succeeded?

Mandy Telford: Well, I was NUS Scotland President for the past two years! I think in Wales and Scotland we had unity in the student movement on what we actually wanted from the government, or from the Scottish Executive, and in student politics, that's quite a major thing.

We got everybody at conference to say, 'this is quite a good package, it might not please everybody, but it gives everybody something, let's unite behind it and do that', and that unity, I think, sent a really strong message to the Scottish Executive.

Also the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are relatively new, and in Scotland they're very, very open and they're very open to consultation, and they're listening to what people are saying, they listened to us, they listened to trade unions, they listened to the public.

We were quite lucky in a way, because we had the Scottish Parliament elections, and every party apart from the Labour Party stood on the mandate of abolishing tuition fees, so that was number one, when the parliament started, on the political agenda. We just took that chance.

I think it united the student movement behind it, and worked hard on getting in there. I'm still trying to get to grips with Westminster! It's a different organisation all together, you have so many departments, so many different education ministers doing different things.

Getting access to these ministers is really, really hard, whereas in Scotland, and I'm sure it's the same in Wales, they're being very open and consultative with the people - because it's smaller and I think because it's new.

Question: Given that there are so many former NUS presidents in the Commons, why do you think it is that your case continues to fall on deaf ears in England?

Mandy Telford: I know it is hard. So many presidents are there but then there are so many others in the government that aren't ex-NUS presidents.

Stephen Twigg has just become education minister for schools in London and things like that, so I'm meeting him soon and obviously he's not going to have direct impact on what's happening student funding-wise.

I see these people and it's like, 'please, you have to give us something', but the Labour government is huge, they have a huge majority, and I think there's actually a very small number of MPs that have been NUS presidents.

Question: Would you support the writing-off of debt for students going to work in the public sector, given the staff shortages?

Mandy Telford: They're talking about not having a lot of teachers, not having a lot of nurses. I think it is a step towards - I did primary school teaching as my degree, so I understand that you get yourself into debt and you're never going to earn that much money, it's not a bad wage, but you're not going to earn a huge amount of money.

I think it's essential that we encourage students into the public sector - one of the things with teaching, it is a very rewarding place to work. At the moment, they're just not given the support financially that they have to be able to do it - so writing off the debt obviously would be a positive thing but I think the government then is just looking at certain students and what they're studying.

You need to say consistently to the government that they need to look at student funding as a whole and if it's a fair system people will be applying to the courses they want to do.

Question: Do you think a student studying a less formal degree, ie, a degree in surfing, should receive the same funding as a student studying for a more traditional course?

Mandy Telford: I would say, people are laughing at this surfing thing but Art History that's been around for donkeys years, I think Prince William's studying it at St Andrews, what recognition has that got to employers in the same way?

I know from surfing, because that's what everyone talks about I know there's a lot of engineering into it and a lot of maths and things like that. I think it just got a lot of bad press from people like Chris Woodhead who talk about the dumbing down of education.

And I would say that's wrong, people need to be continuing their education, and doing whatever they need to do, whatever they want to do, in order to better themselves, and I don't think it actually matters what they do.

I think it would be a dangerous place to say, 'well, you're alright if you're being a lawyer, a teacher or a nurse, and you're actually okay if you're doing English or history or all those old subjects, but these new ones, no we're not so sure about it.'

Universities are not going to get funding for a course that teaches students to surf! I do think some people - I think people who make comments like that are perhaps against the widening access agenda.

Question: Would you support a call from Roderick Floud to make employability an aspect of degrees to encourage business to have closer ties with universities?

Mandy Telford: Well, we made a comment that we agree that business should have closer links with education and we agree that students should be employable at the end of the day.

We agree that at the moment we have students studying a degree who don't actually know what to do with it. They don't understand how to relate it to the job market. So I would like to see more emphasis from universities in telling them what skills they're getting on the way through.

If you're doing history, you don't just come out with knowledge of the Chinese revolution or something, you actually come out with very good analysis skills and reporting skills, and skills like that, and judgement.

I would be very wary of linking it up to closely because then on the other side, people who are doing art history, what employability do they have? But they are still gaining things the employers would want.

So yes, I think we should have more emphasis on what students are going to do after their degree and with it, to make themselves employable to employers and to link to business but not going so far as saying, 'you are not employable'. You could say, 'we don't like the look of you so we're not going to employ you' so it gets a bit vague.

Question: What do you hope to see in the comprehensive spending review regarding further and higher education?

Mandy Telford: Serious money! We argue that students don't have enough money - AUT and NATFHE and NUT and everything say that lecturers aren't being paid enough, and then Universities UK are saying universities physically don't have enough money and some of them are crumbling around their ears, FE Colleges are the same - my wish list would be a huge injection of cash into all areas of post-16 education because they need it.

I'm not going to say one is more important than the other, I think that's a game that some people try and make us play, 'we've got this money, who's more important?'

It's all important and the government needs to make some hard decisions, and get that money to education.

Question: Should the focus of university funding from central government be research or teaching based?

Mandy Telford: I think research money - I think we need to re-evaluate who is getting the research money and why they're getting the research money because often it's the old universities who have been doing it for a while who get the research money and the new universities who are perhaps doing good things, but they're not perhaps recognised for it.

I'd like to see perhaps Centres of Excellence, research in one subject that is done by numerous universities throughout the country that they all get together and they all share resources and therefore share the money.

At the moment, they are trying to beat each other at getting the money, I don't think that's helpful for students at the end of the day, but resources do need to go into teaching because if we have lecturers who don't have time to give students one-to-one advice or tutorials then that's not benefiting students at all and it's not benefiting their education.

But then they also need time to do their research, and then as professionals obviously we want them to do the stuff they want to do.