The Educational Institute of Scotland Further Education Lecturers’ Association (EIS-FELA) has decided to suspend strike action on Wednesday 8 May (tomorrow). All students must attend College as normal.
However, action short of strike action continues, including not uploading student assessment results to College systems. Further planned strike action which is scheduled for Wednesday 15 and Thursday 16 May has not been suspended.
Discussions are continuing at a national level and we will update students as soon we can on any further progress made.
What is action short of strike?
As part of the ongoing national pay dispute, the EIS has voted in favour of undertaking a resulting boycott and the withdrawal of goodwill, these are explained below:
Resulting boycott
Lecturers will still mark your assessments, provide you with feedback as normal and your results will be kept on record. The only change is that lecturers participating in the industrial action will not formally enter your result into the College student records system.
What does this mean?
This means your assessment result will still be held and kept safe by the College, it may just take longer for it to appear on your record. Please don’t worry, if the dispute is not resolved before results need to be in place to allow students to progress or be certificated then the College will take action to ensure arrangements are put in place to manage any situation where resulting is delayed. Your progression will not be affected.
It is important that you don’t worry about this boycott and continue to focus on completing your assessments.
Withdrawal of goodwill
Lecturers will only work strictly to their contract terms of employment. Within timetabled class time they will teach and support you as normal, however they will not be conducting any duties or tasks that they would deem to be voluntary or outwith their contracted hours of work. This might include:
- Not answering emails, phone calls or preparing classes outside of normal working hours
- Not undertaking voluntary tasks or meetings outside of normal working hours
- Not marking assessments outside of normal working hours
What does this mean?
This means you may not be able to contact your lecturer outside of class times and should ask for more help within class time instead. Lecturers will still support you outside of class times if it is within their normal working hours. You may also have to wait slightly longer for assessment feedback if your lecturer is participating in the industrial action.
For more information on the industrial action please visit your Students’ Association website.
If you have any questions or concerns please speak to your lecturer, Student Services or your Students’ Association.
We will keep you up to date with any changes to planned strike action via the Student Portal and our social media pages: Facebook and Twitter.
