Update on the Marking & Assessment Boycott

Following an impasse in negotiations with Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA), University and College Union (UCU) has called a nation-wide Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB), which commenced on the 20th of April. In addition to this, in response to QMUL management’s renewed threats of punitive wage deductions, additional local strikes will be taking place in June. This email gives an update on the local situation at Queen Mary and explains what MAB is, what it means for students, and what students can do to help bring it to an end.

Staff participating in the boycott will temporarily cease marking – students won’t see any marks or feedback from their teachers on QMPlus or MySIS. Staff will also not participate in exam boards.This is a delay, not a cancellation: when an acceptable offer is negotiated with employers, staff can begin marking. This may delay graduation and progression; PGR examinations will also be affected. However, staff will continue to carry out the rest of their work, including:

• supporting students with job applications and applications for postgraduate studies
• supporting international students with their visas
• providing informal feedback on penultimate assignments to support students preparing for their final assignment
• respond to emails, etc

More detailed information can be found here. 

The purpose of the boycott is to get employers to negotiate in good faith about the state of Higher Education. This boycott is the last resort of staff who are trying to get the powerful employer organisation to listen to calls to address workload, casualisation, student-staff ratio, underinvestment in staff, etc. Issues that all directly affect students, and which staff have tried to shield students from for years. But the situation is unsustainable. Thus far, however, employers have refused to negotiate, and have opted instead to devote energy to undermining the boycott, both by imposing punitive pay deductions to intimidate staff out of the boycott and by getting rid of processes of degree verification to neutralise the boycott at the expense of the credibility of the university degree.

Last year, QMUL’s response to a local MAB sacrificed students’ degrees in an attempt to circumvent the boycott, including by recruiting replacement markers (who often had little knowledge of the module they were marking and were unfamiliar with the requirements set out in class), removing quality assurances, and even by letting students graduate without their degrees. ‘Replacement marks’ are already appearing in students grade books, without consultation with the teachers involved.

This year, QMUL Senior Management has reverted on an agreement with Queen Mary UCU (QMUCU), and renewed their threats for MAB deductions. Deducting staff their entire pay in the midst of a cost of living crisis for participating in legal industrial action and withholding only some of their labour while otherwise continuing to work is a punitive and excessive strategy that has, at QMUL and elsewhere, served only to escalate the dispute. In response to the renewed threat of deductions, QMUCU has resolved to take local strike action. This means that in addition to boycotting marking, staff who take strike action will also not do any other work, including the duties listed above.

The local strike dates are:

• Friday 16th of June and Saturday 17th of June
• Monday 19th of June to Thursday 22nd of June

Student support was instrumental in preventing local strike action at Queen Mary  earlier in the spring, and students can change the direction of the dispute again:

• Students from the University of Edinburgh have started a cross-institutional, nation-wide open letter campaign called #SettleTheDispute, which calls on university managements to negotiate with the union in good faith in order to avoid further disruption to students’ degrees. The campaign is student-led and unaffiliated with any trade union. An open letter has also been published for Queen Mary; you can find it here. At the University of Cambridge, the campaign has already resulted in a joint statement calling for UCEA to settle the dispute. The National Union of Students (NUS) also has an open letter for UCEA, which you can find here.
• Write to the VP of your Faculty. Let them know you do not want anyone but your own teachers to mark your assignments. You can write individually or organise a letter or open letter with students in your School, society, or dormitory.

We want to keep you in the loop and continue to work with students to build a university that is supportive of everyone. We will keep you informed by emails and town halls (meetings you can attend to ask any questions, and raise any concerns); you can also reach out to us to discuss concerns and plans. Reach out to our Student Liaison, or find the QMUL UCU union branch on Twitter (@qm_ucu) or Instagram (@qm_ucu).