They have committed to making affected students whole, to the tune of a £2.4 million payout. This new initiative helps to fill the gap in learning caused by all the industrial action taken by staff from March to June. If adopted, the university’s approach would make waves as a model for other institutions struggling with similar issues.
This compensation scheme ensures that students have the opportunity to make up for important teaching time missed during the strikes. These strikes finished at the end of June. UK fee-paying students are entitled to £100 compensation for each disrupted module, capped at £600. By comparison, international fee-payers are eligible to receive £200 per module, to a maximum of £1,200.
One of the beneficiaries is Anna Nix. She’s a 22 year-old exchange student from the Czech Republic that lost out on five hours of instruction time and got only £200 in compensation. In the same way, 21-year-old Amala Parry from Nottinghamshire, who missed 20 hours of teaching time, was awarded £200. Parry shared her frustration about how the cumulative effect of the many hours she’s lost has affected her education.
“The lost time cut my contact hours down by half in the second semester and I only had eight hours as it was.” – Amala Parry
Loes Veldpaus is secretary of her university’s branch of the University and College Union (UCU). She could not overstate the significance of this compensation payout. She explained that it might “send a signal to other universities,” in terms of how they handle these types of situations moving forward. Veldpaus characterized the payout as “monumental,” a word that underscored its potential to sway policies to the benefit—or detriment—of the higher education sector.
The university explained that money not spent on unpaid wages during the length of the strike has been invested to the compensation package. A spokesperson for Newcastle University stated, “We are offering students compensation for missed teaching due to industrial action, which is in line with the latest directions to the sector from the Office for Students (OfS).”
Even with these compensation efforts, the UCU continues to keep a keen eye on job security at the university. The union has gotten guarantees from university administrators that there will be no additional layoffs until 2021. It is inexcusable that over 200 academics have taken voluntary redundancy so far in this time.
