News

Report: Student Union meeting, 9 May 2017

This is a report from Maïa Pal, who met with representatives of the Student Union to discuss future collaboration. 

Report from UCU – Student Union meeting

9 May 2017 | 2-3pm JHB 202

Present: Maïa Pal (Lecturer International Relations, Social Sciences UCU rep), Elena Saldana Quintans (SU President), James Patton (SU Vice President of Academic Experience), Robin Mcsorley (SU Deputy Chief Executive)

Agenda:

1. Presentations, long term objectives, and schedule for future meetings

2. Common issues – NSS Boycott, Student reps

3. Communication / website

  1. Presentations/Long Terms Objectives/Future Meetings

Objective for SU and UCU to work more closely together on a variety of issues – which will likely increase as the moves to and from Headington come nearer. Objective to meet regularly in a similar format, hopefully with an extra UCU exec member, and to include a slot for SU officer at UCU AGMs (next date for this TBC – UPDATE: inviting a SU officer to UCU AGMs  was agreed by UCU’s AGM held on 10 May 2017). Agreed for Maia Pal to meet with new officers who are taking position end of June. Meeting to be organised in July, to be booked by SU once calendars are clearer, and from then organise a set of meetings during the year.

  1. Common Issues

NSS Boycott: Both officers commented on lack of effectiveness of NUS boycott – President disagreed with the campaign, and claimed that they felt TEF forced university to improve its position and approach towards students’ demands regarding teaching and services provided. The changes to the TEF being discussed nationally were positive and pushing for less use of metrics, more focus on employability for part-time students and attainment gap for BME students. The president also stressed the importance of NSS comments for the university and how seriously she felt they were taken into account, so she felt the boycott was counter-productive.

The recent NUS conference decided this year to work to develop an alternative framework or TEF for measuring teaching, but also others aspects of university life (volunteering, issues, campaigns, etc.). Nation-wide student union consultation is to be compiled by the NUS, and data is to be analysed locally. No details given by NUS yet. SU have local discretion as to how to compile or analyse data for now. Brookes are going to look at data from the Teaching Awards to find common points or characteristics that have motivated students to nominate teachers.

Both officers emphasised how they were keen to have staff and UCU input, and I stressed how important that would be for us, after explaining why staff may have some cautionary remarks concerning this data, or how it would be used and analysed.

This led into a discussion about teaching methods, the outcome of which was that it would be useful for staff to be clearer about what teaching methods they use, and why, so as to help students also better evaluate and understand the different approaches and styles of teachers. If we are moving into a TEF environment with increasing student-led evaluation of teaching, more discussion and collaboration between unions is absolutely essential. The officers also noted the differences of opinion about teachers depending on the degree level (4, 5, 6, or PG) and we discussed how we could maybe extract this from the analysis of data.

Student reps: the SU is rolling out a new policy for student reps starting this September, which will be announced shortly. There has been confusion and rumours about this policy, and the officers were eager to stress that their policy did NOT involve telling students not to attend departmental meetings. We discussed the various challenges with student attendance, their reluctance to attend long and complex meetings, but also why their presence is absolutely essential, especially in line with previous discussions of the need for more student input into teaching methods and rationale so as to improve evaluation of teaching. Option to organise meetings so as to deal with issues requiring students all in one go, but I stressed this was not necessarily easy or even possible for us.

To recap, officers stressed there was a wide consultation of faculties, committees, lecturers, high percentage of reps, all across faculties, as well as SSCs and associate deans for student experience.

The policy will, most importantly, put in place faculty training of REPs by SSCs and standardise procedures and practices across university.

  1. Communication

We ran out of time but covered some communication issues faced by both unions, in terms of how best to reach both our memberships, and how to improve the image and knowledge of unions’ work, and how we could share valuable insights with each other about how to solve similar problems we face in the current climate of education.

Report from your Representatives at the Faculty of Business

Graham Diggle and Chris Harlow, your Faculty Representatives at the Faculty of Business, have compiled a report of their activity for the academic year 2016-2017. Read more about what they’ve been up to below. 

Faculty meetings

29 Nov

–> Meeting of a dozen UCU members to discuss:

  • Members attitude to calls for strike action
  • UCU work on workload planning
  • Reduced pay rates for Associate Lecturers

3 April (social event)

–> Meeting half a dozen UCU in social mode

  • One new member recruited
  • Concern about difficulty in having places to meet
  • Feelings about poor morale at Faculty – later echoed by report from UCL London

Meetings with Faculty Exec (Andrew Halford)

8 Dec

  • Discussion of the WLP framework, especially the intensification of workload and policy of loading to 100%
  • Contrast between the University tariff and proposal for open day “duties”
  • Request for notes of meeting with previous UCU (R Beresford)
  • Appropriate training for programme leads (experience of management difficulties)

19 May

Next meeting scheduled

Casework

Additionally, Graham and Chris have carried out a solid amount of casework, involving both formal and informal discussion processes. Providing direct assistance to members, they have covered issues including discrimination in the appointment process, bullying/harassment, summary cuts to research allowance, and workload planning problems.

 

A big thank you to Graham and Chris for all their hard work this year! 

 

Election results: Your Committee for 2017-2018

Here is the confirmed updated list of Exec Officers for our academic year 2017-2018:

The chair: Alan Reeve

The vice-chair: Bob Langridge

The treasurer: Stephen Hurt

The minutes secretary: Stewart Thompson

The Health & Safety representative: John Lo Breglio

The equality officer: Sola Adesola

Faculty representative TDE: Tim Jones

Faculty representative HLS: Stewart Thompson

Faculty representative HSS: Maia Pal, Alon Lischinsky, Juliet Henderson

Faculty representative OBI: Garry McGuire

Congratulations to the 2017-2018 team, and a warm welcome to Tim Jones, who has just joined the Committee for the very first time!

We have three more positions to fill. If you are interested in one of them or know someone who might be, then please get in touch!

– The branch secretary

– The anti-casualisation officer*

– Faculty representative for the Faculty of Business

Please note that induction, training, support, and dedicated union hours are available for these roles. The Committee will consider role-sharing for all three roles should this configuration arise.

 

* The anti-casualisation officer must currently be on a casualised contract or have been on such a contract in the past two years.

Oxford Brookes UCU’s Workload Planning Survey-Based Report

This is a report on the Workload Planning Framework (WLP) that we at Oxford Brookes UCU put together based on a survey of our members. 

Executive Summary:

This survey was conducted with the goal to assess the adequacy of the current WLP framework, and to identify which areas—if any—could be improved and how. Nearly half of our members responded to the survey, providing us with both significant quantitative data on trends and patterns across the university as well as extensive qualitative comments reflecting individual experiences.

Our main finding is that there is indeed a significant gap between the hours allocated under the WLP Framework and the hours members actually work in reality. Additionally, we found that there are some clear areas where this gap is particularly acute, which should be addressed as a matter of priority.

The report summarizes the detailed findings of our survey, highlighting the general trends in terms of gross numbers and providing an overview of the comments and suggestions made by the respondents regarding the different areas of the WLP framework.

We would like to emphasize the pressing character of this issue, particularly in light of the health and safety concerns it raises amongst staff in terms of stress.

All percentages in the report have been rounded to the nearest integer.

 

Click here for the full report: WLP_Survey-based-Report_FINAL

Meeting Update: Joint Staff Consultative Committee (JSC)

Jeff Waistell reports the following key points from the last Joint Staff Committee of March 8, 2017:

Resource Allocation Model: detailed work on the RAM has not yet started, although minor changes had been made to the way budgets were being constructed for 2017-18.  Alison Cross agreed to invite the Director of Finance to attend the next meeting of the committee.

Facilities at Wheatley campus post Business move: Professor Julie McLeod had been chairing a group to oversee the usage of facilities at Wheatley following the relocation of the Business School to Headington. The aim was to ensure a positive staff and student experience for those working and studying at Wheatley. Phil Stuhldreer reported that those areas which would be staying at Wheatley had been meeting with EFM project managers to agree which buildings would be used, potential office layouts and facilities requiring modest investment.  It had been agreed that catering would be provided in the refectory, that there would be a cash point in the library (although this would be subject to achieving a minimum usage) and that the scope for offering some of the items sold in the shop was being explored. The final details were expected to be agreed shortly.

Associate Lecturers: permanent contracts had been offered to around 16 Associate Lecturers. UCU were concerned that not all the contracts had been received and that one person deemed eligible appeared to have been overlooked.  UCU were asked to contact Ben Cooper about individual cases.

Student Recruitment and University Finances: Alison Cross reported that it was proving to be a challenging year for Brookes in terms of recruitment. Overall, while applications were down, especially international PG and in nursing, offers were less affected. SMT had agreed that tariff should be maintained and, ideally, increased as evidence across the sector indicated that medium and lower tariff universities had experienced a relatively larger fall in applications.   Faculties and ASA were working hard on conversion activity, ensuring that applications were processed promptly, and some departments were piloting firm unconditional offers. The Registrar had set up a group to review recruitment activity and plans were being developed for clearing. Longer term, the University would need to strengthen its market intelligence and marketing activity, as well as seek to improve its performance against some key metrics in the NSS in order to compete effectively with other universities.  Paul Inman and Oxford Brookes International were also working to improve international recruitment. The University was on target for meeting its planned surplus for 2016-17.

Estates: Alison Cross reported that work would soon start to develop the plans for Harcourt Hill, as well as the requirements for TDE. Some staff at Harcourt Hill were concerned there would not be enough space to accommodate individual offices for all those members of staff that currently had their own office.  Alison explained that the configuration of Harcourt would need to reflect university space planning guidelines and that not everyone who currently had an individual office would necessarily retain this. It was also suggested that it would be helpful to provide an outline timeline for the development of Harcourt. [The committee was subsequently directed to an article in OnStream published on the 9 March 2017, which addresses this.]

Mediation: the University made reference to mediation as a potential solution in some employment policies, yet there did not appear to be resource to draw on when formal mediation was required.  HR explained that the University had trained a team of mediators some years ago, when the method favoured was to have two mediators working together. This proved to be problematic as not all colleagues completed their training and the use of internal mediators lapsed. He added that not all cases were susceptible to mediation, for example where not all the parties were willing to participate. However, external mediators had been used on occasion. Jon mentioned that a good alternative resolution in the past had been to have a collaborative approach between the staff member, manager, Union and HR. Alison agreed that well trained union representatives, open dialogue with HR and early intervention were helpful.

Contracts: concern was expressed about the amount of time it took for contracts to be issued for new members of staff.  HR explained that the last 18 months had been exceptionally busy for the HR department due to the implementation of CORE and changes in staffing.  At certain points of the year, HR had hundreds of contracts to process so the sheer volume of work can lead to delays. A business process review, led by Helen Ellis-Jones, was underway to look to streamline and improve key HR process. The longer-term aim was to develop SLAs.

Report: UCU Southern Regional Council

Our Vice-Chair, Bob Langridge, attended the UCU Southern Regional Council in Winchester on 1 April 2017. Below is his report. 

 

These jolly events take place four times a year when UCU branches in the Region (ours included, to some extent) meet to discuss issues of common interest, collective action and Union governance.

The Spring meeting focuses upon the Annual Congress which is held at the end of May once the first report of the Congress Business Committee has been published. Our motions this year are about (i) excessive pay and remuneration for heads of HE and FE institutions, and (ii) Government withdrawal of bursaries for nurse training

Reports from regional branches included workload planning, possible redundancies at Ruskin College and Southampton Solent University, a merger between Southampton City College and Southampton Solent University,  the possibility of University of Southampton departing from the 2006 Framework Agreement, and UCU uncovering that Portsmouth University has been unlawfully denying associate lecturers rights to holiday pay.

While we should keep an eye on these matters and offer collective support, where redundancies are threatened, the most obvious parallel with our travails at Oxford Brookes is in relation to Workload Planning schemes. While UCU and university management have negotiated and agreed such a scheme at Bournemouth, there were reports that this agreement has not been implemented by management. Meanwhile, Southampton Solent has been discussing an alternative workload planning scheme based on 1560 hours (ours is 1600) and, as a consequence, we will be sharing information on the operation of these schemes across the Region.

 

Meetings and Events Update, 22 March 2017

From now on, we will be sending you regular email keeping you up to date on our local activities. On this website, you will find the details for each item. Please feel free to get in touch with us (ucu.brookes@gmail.com or any one of us) if you have any comments or questions!

 

Alan Reeve (Chair) and Jeff Waistell (Branch Secretary) attended the Workload Planning Review Group held on February 15th. The following issues were discussed:

Tariff for Collaboration Managers

Management noted that the current tariff already offered flexibility so it was agreed to leave the tariff unchanged for the coming year.

Number of direct reports in OBI

A review was taking place which was looking at wider structural issues.  It was planned that this would be discussed with SMT in March.

Review of line management of Technicians

Ben Cooper reported that he and Astrid had met with Helen Packer to discuss the matter.  The Faculty was mindful that there were some activities that needed to be reviewed, such as academics having to spend time ordering equipment, but it was also evident there were still some misunderstandings about some matters.  There was no support for changing the line management structure from the Head of Department.  It was agreed that reporting lines and local operational arrangements were not a matter for the WLP Review Group, and it should be dealt with outside this committee.

Quadruple modules

It was noted that TDE was the only faculty to have such modules and there was already an additional line in the TDE tariffs to address Studio and Design-based teaching where these modules arose.

OBBS 2017 / 2018 WLP tariff

Andrew Halford confirmed that reference to the full range of University WLP tariffs would be made in the OBBS workload plan when published in May.

Marketing work in HSS

Jeff Waistell raised a concern that academics in HSS appeared to be being asked to take on the work of the Marketing Team by being asked to do things such as blogs, social media updates and produce leaflets.  Jeff was advised to raise this with management outside the meeting.

UCU WLP survey update

UCU had made a number of changes to the report of the survey that they had run, including: identifying what questions had been asked; including charts detailing the proportion of respondents; adding the raw data, plus minor linguistic changes.

Management noted that the financial implications of the recommendations were potentially significant and said that they could not support the recommendations for changes to the WLP on the basis of the survey.

RAM

UCU asked about proposed changes to the Resource Allocation Model (RAM). It was noted that a paper from Finance on this had recently been considered by Executive Board.  Management explained that the process was likely to evolve over the next couple of years with income and expenditure being better aligned with activity. Jeff asked if this would mean that the University would increase the number of teaching-only contracts.  Management said Stern’s suggestion to include all research-active staff in the next REF had prompted discussion at some HEIs about making greater use of teaching-only contracts. This was not favoured by Brookes and management would be reflecting this in their response to the REF consultation in March.

WLP framework for 2017/2018

 It was noted that a number of significant changes had been made in recent years.  It had been agreed that a working group would review the role profiles for Programme Leads, Subject Coordinators, PLSEs and Research Leads. A project to replace the workload planning data base was in prospect and this would provide better data on which to base decision.

Management stated that no changes to the WLP framework would be recommended for 2017-18 but that the UCU survey report would be attached to the report to Executive Board.

*

Maïa Pal, one of our HSS Faculty Reps, attended a meeting on Feb 22nd with the Faculty Exec. This was a useful meeting, mostly to discuss the move to Harcourt, but also the move of the Business School to Headington. Discussions concerning the WLP were left for the WLP faculty meeting which took place Monday 27 February. Maïa was unfortunately not invited in time for that meeting, and it was scheduled during some of her teaching hours, but she hopes to get more information about those discussions to you once the minutes emerge.

We need to know more from HSS members regarding what your top one or two priority issues would be if you had to choose (research time, nursery, student/staff ratio, transport, offices, etc.). Please send your requests directly to Maïa (mpal@brookes.ac.uk).  

*

Sola Adesola, our Equality Officer, attended various meetings and events in order to raise awareness of equality and give greater visibility to UCU’s work on this front.

She attended the UCU Equality Reps Conference in London on Feb 17th and went through a two-day UCU Equality Officers Training on March 8th-9th in Birmingham.

Here at Brookes, she represented UCU at the LGBT History Month Showcase, speaking about UCU’s work around gender identity. She will also speak at the Department of Business & Management Staff Away Day on March 29th, where she will have 10 minutes to raise awareness of equality issues and of her role as Equality Officer.

Finally, Sola will take advantage of the next UCU Exec Meeting and AGM, both on May 10th, to brief the Exec and our Branch members on the progress we’ve made so far and on the way forward.

*

Jeff Waistell our Branch Secretary, Bob Langridge (Vice-Chair) and Linet Arthur (JSC rep) attended the Joint Staff Consultative Committee (JSC) on March 8th, where the unions collectively raise issues of concern with senior management. The JSC meets several times each year.

The management side placed on the agenda issues of student recruitment and university finance, and the estates investment plan. The union side raised issues of policy (the university’s approach to and provision of mediation, and anonymised responses to leavers’ questionnaires over the last 12 months) and contractual issues (recent salary overpayments, the length of time taken to provide staff with contracts, and incremental progression for staff changing roles within Brookes). We also queried terms and conditions (the effectiveness of the redeployment process) and issues affecting academic workload (the increasing management requirements to provide slides in advance of lectures; extent of academics’ marketing roles and responsibilities; and the proportion of university spending on faculty academics).

We will update you further, with more details, once the JSC minutes are published.

 

 

 

Meetings and Consultations Update, 12 October 2016

This report provides an update on local meetings and consultations pertaining to the new Associate Lecturer policy, issues of car parking, workload planning, and the academic framework.

 

New Associate Lecturer Policy

After a considerable amount of hard work on the part of branch officers, numerous meetings with the management and interventions by the Regional Official, the new AL policy has gone to Executive Board for approval.

The new policy, as members will be aware, means that a significant number of staff who have been on AL contracts for at least two years will be invited to take up fractional or even FT posts. Many of these will put them on a higher salary (point 9 on the pay scale or above), as lecturers or senior lecturers which should mean both greater job security, and job progression through increments and from the Lecturer to Senior Lecturer grades.

The new policy represents a significant move at Brookes away from casualization, and the ad hoc use of academic staff on contracts which were both uncertain and poorly regulated. The policy should ensure that those who move across to fractional appointments will be no worse off than they were, and with the move up to the lecturer grade should be better off over time. We are aware, of course, that in some areas some staff will be worse off – largely as a consequence of irregular pay practices in the past in some parts of the institution where additional pay was given for marking and other activities.

Hopefully the new policy will also see an end to ALs being used as module leaders – which is a role specifically limited to SL and above.

Due in large part to the arguments made by the local branch officers involved in the consultation, we have also secured the same rights to transfer from AL to fractional appointments for staff in Oxford Brookes International (OBI) – who the management originally wished to exclude from the policy.

Whilst we have not achieved all our objectives – not least automatic transfer of ALs to established contracts – we feel that the university is moving in the right direction in terms of the treatment of this very vulnerable group of workers.

Branch officers will continue to be involved in the monitoring of the policy to ensure that it is applied fairly and that the unacceptably high use of Associates which characterised some parts of the university, does not return.

Finally, although the adopted policy has the general support of the local officers, it has yet to be ratified by UCU nationally, and the Regional Official is in correspondence with the university on issues that the Ratification Panel have concerns about.

We will provide an update in due course on how many staff have directly benefited or in due course will benefit from this, but at the moment it looks like considerably more than a handful.

 

Car Parking

At the last meeting of the Travel to Work Group, the management reported that there have been some challenges with the arrangements they thought they had agreed with the contractor who have been commissioned to put these in place – in terms of the systems, the hardware and the management of the car parking. The management indicated that they felt the contractors had been less than straight with them on what they could actually provide, and as a consequence delays have arisen in the implementation of the new arrangements. Both campus unions represent on the committee stressed the need for staff to be fully informed about the progress on this issue which will have a potentially detrimental effect on their working conditions – not least staff who will be moving from Wheatley to Gypsy Lane where parking provision is far less ‘generous’.

Apparently On Stream will carry an update on progress on changes to the management of and charging for parking. We have asked the university to at least tell staff when the new charging regime will be taking effect so that they can prepare for this as appropriate.

 

Workload Planning

The WLP Working Group met briefly in Week 2, but the meeting had to be abandoned due to the fact that several key members of it were at another important university meeting.  However, UCU members on the group are very aware of the myriad concerns of academic colleagues with both the WLP tariffs and the implementation of WLP across the university, and will continue to pursue these concerns with vigour. In particular, we are pressing management on the assessment allowances, module leadership and administration allowances, and the increasing burden of work required outside of the classroom on the quality of our core work – which is teaching and research.  Aside from the issues of stress and the impact of WLP on work life balance, we are, of course, making the obvious (to us) arguments about the link between WLP and the quality of the student experience as reflected in the NSS.

We will provide a further update when the group actually does meet in early November.

 

Academic Framework

Local UCU officers have been sent a draft statement of the broad policy changes proposed by management with respect to the ‘academic framework’, and there will be a meeting in week 3 to talk through these. In essence, the university is proposing to rationalise the number of modules offered – particularly in the first year of undergraduate programmes; to move end of semester 1 exams to the beginning of semester 2, and to shorten the Christmas break by a week. In addition, there may be only one point in the year when formal exam committees meet to sign off marks – at least this is our reading of the proposal.

UCUs concerns here are the implications for the possible elimination of some modules;   the impact of moving exams and assessment to the start of semester two – i.e. the potential overlap of assessment and teaching; and  the sense or non-sense of having only one sign off point for modules in a year.

The Academic Framework policy will also need to be aligned with the PUTS initiative (i.e. changes to the academic timetable with respects to teaching slots which in turn is aligned to concerns about ‘inefficient’ use of university teaching space). Whilst UCU branch officers were consulted earlier in the year on PUTS, the outcomes of any scenario modelling to see if any of this is feasible (i.e. testing how a new timetable would look, factoring in such variables as the caring responsibilities of staff, adequate provision of support services – somewhere to get a bite to eat –etc ; the need to avoid split shifts, and so on and so forth) have not yet been shared with us. But we will endeavour to keep you up to date.