Ensure students are fairly assessed by ending the HLS redundancies
Category: University Petition
Voting closed
We, the signatories of this petition, recognise that the new Board of Examiners (BoE) guidance in relation to current UCU industrial action, is causing unnecessary stress for students and risks posing a detrimental impact to students completing their studies this year. For continuing students, progression and placement opportunities may be impacted as marks may not have been released in time for students to engage with the next planned stage of their studies; moreover, students on support plans face a disproportional impact as they may not receive the reasonable adjustments to which they are entitled.
We believe that the only way to ensure that students are fairly assessed is by stopping industrial action through ending the proposed redundancies being threatened in Health and Life Sciences.
As such, we are calling upon the University senior management team to:
- Immediately stop the proposed redundancies in HLS
- Ensure that students are fairly assessed and receive the marks that they have worked hard for within a reasonable and proportionate timeframe, and,
- Work closely with UCU to resolve longstanding concerns regarding working conditions and pay gaps, and prevent the need for future industrial action which damages student experience.
Comments
Students come first !
Guild Officers and students alike stood in solidarity with staff and the UCU throughout their industrial action. Industrial action began at the start of 2021, when the University announced its plans to reshape its Health and Life Sciences faculty, including the potential removal of 47 members of research and teaching staff. In an open letter to the University’s Senior Management team in June 2021, the Officers called on the University to end the proposed redundancies. This was to prevent any further action and ensure that all students received full and fair marking for Semester 2 assessments, along with protecting staff’s livelihoods. We also called on them to work closely with the UCU to resolve longstanding concerns regarding working conditions and pay gaps. Following ongoing negotiations and action, this number of proposed redundancies was brought down, however walk-outs continued, as two staff were still at risk of compulsory redundancy. On 30/09/21, the union agreed to stand down after it was confirmed that no compulsory redundancies would be made. This was the longest strike action in the history of the UCU. Stopping the redundancies and bringing the end to the industrial action meant that students could once again be assessed fairly and any detrimental impact on them mitigated. It also meant that many lecturers were able to keep their jobs which provided valuable support to students and also showed that we would not stand for an academic precedent to be set that research grants and citations are valued more than quality of teaching. Thanks to students’ strong solidarity with the UCU in a number of rallies, open letters and this petition, it created a united front against the University, which helped push for the end result of no compulsory redundancies.