Exams cancelled while pay negotiations reach impasse
Hundreds of York students face uncertainty over their academic futures after first and second year students were informed of exam cancellations last week due to the current lecturers’ Assessement Boycott.
The cancellations come at a time when talks between the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and the Universities and Colleges Employers’ Association (UCEA) have been described as having reached an “impasse”.
The matter, which is being dealt with on a national scale, could also affect final year students if it fails to be resolved in the coming weeks; with the distinct possibility of some York students not graduating in the summer term.
The present concern over students being unable to graduate has heightened this week as Keele University took the drastic step of proposing that degrees should be handed out to students who have completed only two thirds of their final year.
Gemma Machin, a second-year student from Keele, described the situation as “disgusting” adding “students are in uproar”.
York are yet to decide on a policy for dealing with graduation problems. University Press Officer Dave Garner said last week “we have to stand by and be guided by what happens nationally”.
Biology is one of several subjects which have been affected by the cancellations.
Second year Biology representative Matt Turley who found out his exam was to be cancelled only days before it was scheduled to take place, said he was particularly angry at the way the dispute has been handled, stating that students were “not aware of the strike action” and accusing lecturers and the university of not providing enough information. He added “it’s really unfair that we have been treated this way”.
Turley and other second year Biology students held a meeting last week to discuss how to deal with the crisis. It was decided that a letter would be written to Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brian Cantor, to ask that a solution to the boycott is found swiftly.
Lisa Trickett, a first year Biology student, also felt aggrieved by the current exam situation saying, “I feel frustrated I wasted time revising over the holidays.
“Exams being rescheduled will affect the marks I get for the modules this term”.
Despite increasing worries as to students’ futures, neither AUT or UCEA can agree terms on re-starting negotiations, with both parties saying that the opposition is standing in the way of talks recommencing.
AUT representatives admitted that “talks about talks are happening at the moment, but the ball is very much in the hands of the employers who are refusing to talk with us until the boycott is stopped.”
In contrast, employers said that they “are continuing to talk about how best to get them back into negotiations” adding “we hope to see that the AUT rejoin negotiations at the earliest opportunity.”
The AUT’s expressed justification for the strikes is that an agreement was made between them and university Vice-Chancellors that pay for teaching fellows would increase once the £3.6 billion generated by top-up Fees came into the sector this year.
National AUT Press Officer, Dan Ashley said “this isn’t an outlandish moon-on-a-stick claim: we’re only asking for money that was promised to us”.
However, a pay rise of 20% is now being demanded by AUT officials, which they claim is in line with the 25% pay-rise which Vice-Chancellors have received over the last three years. UCEA Press Officer, Matt Granger, argues this “would account for all the new income in the sector,” adding that employers feel that the boycott occurred pre-emptively to negotiations and is therefore unjustified.
In a recent interview Dr Simon Parker, the AUT spokesperson for York University, accused employers of taking “a feudal Victorian mill-owner attitude”.
He went on to say that employers were still offering the same “meagre” pay rise offered last year, asking “what alternative do we have?”
When asked whether other forms of protest such as boycotting research had been properly considered, as suggested by SUs who have recently withdrawn support of the boycott, Parker said “the long-term consequences of all other actions available to us is much worse”. Aborting research projects would cause job losses and be “damaging to people in a permanent way…if we thought there was a way of targeting only university senior management and no one else we would have. We thought long and hard about this”.
Parker called the current boycott “a once in a generation opportunity”, claiming “UK academics are some of the most successful in the world, and the least paid. We are not being selfish, we are actually protecting the future of British universities”.
He added “I think we will be benefiting students in the long term by making graduate careers more attractive”.
Conversely, UCEA say they are ready to start negotiating for a higher rise than the current 6% which is on the table, but according to a spokesperson “despite the softening of the employers’ line this week, the AUT made absolutely no movement whatsoever”.
AUT assessment boycott: The story so far
17 February
AUT and Natfhe vote in favour of industrial action
7 March
Lecturers walk out in a one day strike
12 April
A letter signed by 20 Students’ Unions, later to be supported by 10 others, is sent to the AUT general secretary demanding an end to the assessment boycott
19 April
Students are informed of exam cancellations
