Tuesday 27-11-2018 - 14:33

Durham Students’ Union and the Durham Branch of University and Colleges Union (UCU) must express our dissatisfaction with the pay and conditions of employment of Durham University’s hourly-paid teaching staff, and call for an urgent review and improvement of these arrangements.

These teachers, often postgraduate research students, are essential to the education provided by the University. Almost every undergraduate student will have been supported in their learning by a teacher on one of these contracts. But these contracts are sometimes little more than a side of A4 without clearly articulated tasks, benefits and conditions. The time taken to prepare classes or mark work is frequently much higher than the time actually paid.

A further concern is that the hourly rate of pay for these teachers has not changed since October 2008, currently sitting at £11.40 per hour. When you consider those staff on fixed or permanent contracts who teach with a similar level of expertise typically start at an hourly rate of £14.42 at the least, with an array of additional benefits and subject to review and negotiation annually, this is clearly a disparity that must be addressed.

A review of pay and conditions is long overdue, and we want to work with Durham University to undertake one. A review should include improving University policies around employment of hourly-paid teaching staff, ensuring that pay, expectations and conditions are fair, robust and able to be consistently and equitably implemented. Currently, teaching staff report that this doesn’t happen. We believe improvements should include:

• Consistent, formal and clear contracts, with consideration of whether annualised hours may be appropriate
• An hourly rate of pay to match those on full employment contracts who undertake similar teaching and demonstrating, and other policies on pay to be applied consistently across the University
• Ensuring the demands for assignment marking per hour are fair and evidence-based
• Fairly paid time for the preparation and post-class office hours necessary to support students and deliver lectures, tutorials and practicals effectively
• Ensuring work is allocated to teachers in a transparent manner, with all those who possess the knowledge to teach being given a fair chance to apply
• Teachers being given paid training time to ensure they can teach well, and students can benefit from high quality teaching

Our teachers truly want to provide the best education they can to students, but many staff on these contracts are left in limbo about whether they will be allocated the work they need to make ends meet, or be allocated the time to complete their work to a high standard. Add to that inconsistent training practices for new teachers across Departments, and you risk stressed employees and placing the undergraduate educational experience in jeopardy.

We hope that the University will recognise the disservice it is doing not only to those it contracts to teach, but to the students in receipt of the education such staff provide, and work with us to improve the conditions for its teachers into the future.

If you are engaged on an hourly-paid basis to teach yourself, please do consider joining UCU and work with us to improve our collective teaching conditions: https://www.ucu.org.uk/.