Dear Student,
The University and College Union (UCU) branch of York St John University would like
to provide you with an update to the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB), part of
nationally coordinated industrial action that is affecting most universities in the UK at
the present time. Your grades may be affected by this boycott. Firstly, every member
of staff participating in the boycott understands the uncertainty, anxiety and difficulty
that students may be experiencing as a result of the action, and has considered its
potential impacts extremely carefully. It is not comfortable or easy for any of us to
risk the dispute impacting our students by causing delays to marks and other
uncertainties about progression, study abroad plans or visas, and accordingly we
hope our employers will agree to return to negotiations as soon as possible. If you
would like to discuss any aspect of this dispute with members of the UCU Branch
Committee, to pledge your solidarity or to ask questions, please use the email at the
top of the page.
We hope this letter goes some way to providing information and transparency the
University has not afforded you, particularly around what you need to be aware of as
to how your work may have been assessed in the absence of module leaders. We
apologise that we cannot give answers to all of the questions we know our students
will have; this dispute involves two sides: the lecturing staff represented by
Universities and College Union and the employer, York St John University’s Executive
Board, represented by the University and College Employers Association (UCEA). The
outcomes of the current dispute do not sit with the decisions of lecturing staff alone
to decide. As students, you deserve to know as much information as we are able to
provide, and are grateful to the Student Union for allowing us to share this with you.
Why is there a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) nationally?
Industrial action has been a last resort for staff. The national dispute has four fights:
workload, precarious contracts, equality gaps and pay. Workload: over the last five to
ten years restructuring has reduced staffing in several areas and increased workloads.
Staff are working far beyond contracted hours to ensure the quality of your teaching
and feedback. Precarity: approximately 40% of teaching staff in higher education are
on hourly paid contracts, often temporary ones, which means they cannot guarantee
an income to pay for housing, bills and food. Equality gaps: on average female staff,
Black and Asian staff, and staff with disabilities earn less than able-bodied White men
with similar qualifications and achievements. Pay: since 2008 pay settlements have
been below inflation and have, therefore, been real terms pay cuts, and that’s before
the current cost of living crisis. The UCU called several strike days and the MAB in the
hope that employers would discuss realistic solutions to these four fights. We have
been forced into this action through years of the UCEA not making sufficient progress
on these fights.
If my lecturer participates in this boycott, who marks my work?
Rather than resuming talks to resolve the dispute, University managers have advised
Heads of School and Associate Heads to embark on the labour-intensive job of
implementing varied processes of ‘mitigation’ and we are deeply concerned about
these proposed measures and their impact on students. Where the module leader
participates in the boycott, this may result in your work not being marked until July or
even August. The priority for the University is to mark work of those graduating this
year. Much of this work may not have been delayed to any significant degree. Of
greater concern to you however is HOW your work has been, or will be marked.
We aware of the following concerning mitigation practices:
● Some work has been marked by a member of staff with a different specialism
than the subject area covered in the work they are marking – including
dissertations.
● Some work has been marked by staff who were not even an employee of York
St John, but have been brought in on an hourly rate to mark work they have no
prior knowledge of.
● Some line managers have taken the work of multiple boycotters so their own
marking load reaches 100s of scripts rather than the tens they normally mark.
You have every right to know the detail of how your work has been marked during
this period. Rather than being assured that “suitable mitigation measures are in
place”, demand to know the details. How are these mitigation measures meeting the
requirements enshrined in the University’s Code of Practice on Assessment. Has a
mark you have received been inconsistent with your previous marks? Has feedback
been unusually generic or brief? If you are still waiting for marks, ask your Associate
Heads and Heads of School for a time scale. If you have received marks, be aware of
the following:
1. A sample of work across all grades should be moderated by a second member
of staff to ensure fairness and overall consistent approach – has this happened
with your work?
2. When two or more people on a marking team mark together for the first time,
they do a calibration exercise where they all mark several of the same
submission to compare marks before they embark on marking the rest of the
marking load – has this happened with your work?
3. The Code of Practice on Assessment says “if at least one specialist marker
cannot be found, identify a substitute to mark the assessment as pass/fail so
that credit can be awarded for the work.” Has your work been marked by a
non-specialist, but have they given you a numerical grade rather than a pass
or fail? Ask why they have gone against the Code of Practice in this case.
Some of the mitigation measures in place will likely lead to marks that do not reflect
your efforts and accomplishments this semester; furthermore, this could reduce the
quality of your degree, diploma, or certificate. You deserve better. Your education has
already been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which time mitigation was
absolutely necessary. Staff worked hard to maintain the quality and standard of
education at YSJ during the pandemic, and while some assessment tasks were
adjusted, assessments were marked by staff. Thus, Covid mitigation was
fundamentally different from the current one: staff input was vital to the success of
Covid-19 mitigation; current ‘mitigation’ proposals are based around ignoring staff
input.
When will this dispute end? Who can bring that about?
University managers can take material steps to help national negotiations resume.
This is a national dispute, to bring overdue and significant improvements to the entire
Higher Education sector. The role of the Vice Chancellor and the Executive Board of
this University is, however, of vital importance, as are the Vice Chancellors and
Executive Boards of every other university in the UK. Our Vice Chancellor is currently
chair of an umbrella group called Yorkshire Universities. She is chairing a forum which
brings together some of northern England’s largest universities. She could be using
that position to appeal to all the other VCs of Yorkshire Universities to act in concert
to put pressure on UCEA to agree to make some substantial progress on the four
fights we mentioned earlier. She could have taken up our branch’s invitation to draft a
joint public statement with York St John UCU branch to state that, for the good of
staff and students everywhere, movement on the four fights is absolutely crucial.
Instead, we have seen a level of apathy, and even ignorance, as to what the Four
Fights actually are, and how improving them would enhance students’ learning
experience ten fold.
You have a lot of power here too. Sign the #SettleTheDispute: An Open Letter to the
Executive Board of York St John University. This is an open letter written
by YSJ students.
● Write to your own Dean/Head of School demanding answers on the above
‘mitigation’ measures for marking and its impact on your marks.
● Email the VC, Professor Karen Bryan k.bryan@yorksj.ac.uk raising concerns about
the punitive and disproportionate deductions to staff pay and urging her to take the
steps available to her to help settle the dispute.
What is the impact on staff of this dispute?
We have seen an aggressive turn towards marketisation of Higher Education,
particularly since the inflated student fee structures came into play in 2010. We have
seen Vice Chancellors and Executive Board salaries ballooning and 6 figure salaries
for senior management are now viewed as completely legitimate and normal, as is
the case at York St John. This has left senior managers adrift from the day to day
problems facing teaching staff particularly around the on-average extra day a week
we are putting in unpaid to keep up with the demands of teaching growing student
numbers, in under-staffed departments. Be reassured that your lecturers/tutors are
committed to providing you with a quality education, we always have been. But the
VC and Executive Board are simply unaware of the excessive workload issues and the
unmanageably low pay of some of our casualised staff. Instead they have
congratulated themselves for awarding a not-in-line-with-inflation 5% pay increase
after 15 years of a real terms pay cuts, and without looking at the excessive workload
question in tandem with that pay increase.
Staff do not want to strike or to take part in the MAB. However, their working
conditions are your learning conditions, and current conditions are not sustainable.
Hence, UCU members feel obligated to engage in lawful industrial action. Their
commitment to secure an improved higher education for everyoneis coming at a
devastating financial cost to them and their families. On strike days, staff lose 100%
of their pay. During the MAB, staff continue to carry out every other expectation of
their contract including lectures, seminars, tutorials, answering emails, preparation
and planning, giving formative feedback, participating in meetings and conferences
etc – and yet they are losing a substantial amount of pay for an extended period. YSJ
has stated that it will deduct 100% of pay, and make a 50% ex gratia (gift) payment
from 20th April until 30th September. Such extensive deductions are designed to be
entirely punitive and have put some of our staff with 14 years teaching experience in
a situation where in June, their hourly rate has been reduced to between £3 and £4
an hour! This is while they continue to fulfill 97% of their workload. These deductions
are wildly disproportionate: academic staff at York St John are allocated 15 days for
marking summative assignments. Although YSJ managers claim they are required to
make these deductions, the amount that they deduct could be more proportionate;
for example, Ulster University has not imposed any deductions; the University of
Hertfordshire and Queen Margaret University, both post-92s and of a similar size to
YSJ, have rescinded the threat of deductions; King’s College London, a
world-renowned university, has reduced its threat of 50% deductions from 20 days to
10 days (i.e. a maximum of 5 days of salary); University of Warwick will only deduct
25% of pay from the time that would have been spent marking.
Thank you for reading this letter. We sincerely hope that together, staff and students
of York St John can help settle this dispute, and come out with a fairer workplace/
learning environment for all staff and students in higher education.
In solidarity,
UCU Branch Committee