Author: davepickering

As part of the ongoing national industrial action a further two days of strike action are planned to take place across Scotland’s colleges this week.

As a result all classes, including evening and Schools College Partnership, are cancelled on Wednesday 15 and Thursday 16 May. However the College will be OPEN for students to access all facilities and learning resources for self-directed study. You do not have to attend College on these days.

Please note: All evening classes are cancelled unless your lecturer has told you otherwise.

Please be aware that although classes are cancelled, scheduled exams will go ahead on this day. If you have an exam scheduled on Wednesday 15 or Thursday 16 May you MUST come to College as normal.

Our virtual learning environment, Moodle, will be available throughout strike action so you can keep up to date with your studies. Your lecturers will let you know in advance of anything important you should be aware of and any available materials.

Your student support payments will not be affected by the strike action.

As well as the strike days, the EIS will continue 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.

Please be assured that the College has measures in place to ensure as little disruption to your studies and resulting as possible. If the situation changes, we will let you know as soon as we can. 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.