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Kingston UCU newsletter October 2021
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Politics at Kingston University has leapt up the Guardian league table for UK Universities from ranking 61st in 2021 to 17th in 2022. This extraordinary result puts Politics in the top quartile nationwide for the discipline.
To emphasise the achievement, Kingston Politics is ranked the second highest post-92 institution in the entire UK, missing the top spot only by a small margin. The Guardian’s table ranks Kingston Politics markedly ahead of all comparable London region institutions, considered to be its competitors.
The achievement of a top quartile ranking is the fruit of the great commitment and teamwork between staff and students in the Politics department over the last three years.
Significantly, the result is entirely at odds with the unduly pessimistic forecasts of market ‘research’ that was commissioned and used as evidence by senior management for its decision to suspend and then close Politics undergraduate courses.
While a competitive league table is only one way of assessing departmental performance, even so it is an important one because it feeds through into candidate student choices.
The Guardian top quartile ranking completely validates the academic staff’s case that there has been a clear uptick in teaching and learning performance, and especially the students’ campaign to keep the department open.
Based on this new evidence, senior management should reconsider its closure decision as hasty, ill-informed but above all ill-judged.
Rather than bury the news as an inconvenient truth, senior management should build on this latest success, and reopen Kingston’s top quartile performing undergraduate Politics courses for recruitment in 2022/23.
The jobs cuts and planned course closures at Kingston following the KSA and Politics ‘consultations’ made it onto the front page of the Surrey Comet again in July.
As noted, ‘Staff have described the mental health impact of losing their livelihoods during a pandemic, in which they have made exceptional efforts to teach and support students, as “inhumane”. They’ve described the consultation process as a “sham” in which none of the issues raised over errors and omissions in the rationale, or counter proposals put forwards, were engaged with, and substantive decisions had already been taken.’
The response from the university ‘spokesperson’ fails to even mention the decision to axe History, or the fact all remaining historians face compulsory redundancy, nor that staff in Media & Communications and Film Studies have lost valued colleagues to voluntary severance and now face intensified workloads.
As Steve Woodbridge, Senior Lecturer in History states, “The decision to axe all history provision flies in the face of promises the University made to retain a history ‘footprint’ and ensure future engagement with the study of history. The University has also completely ignored the voices of national organisations who represent the history profession and who expressed their concern at Kingston’s plans, such as History UK and the Royal Historical Society.”
The Royal Historical Society themselves have followed up their initial announcement on the threats to History courses in post-1992 universities with a strong statement explicitly decrying Kingston’s decision to permanently withdraw History provision, the consequences for History staff, and the reputational impact of these cuts, noting “We are all the poorer for the loss of this hub of historical excellence”. Here is the statement in full:
The outcome of the Kingston School of Art (KSA) ‘consultation’ has been released, buried deep on StaffSpace. There are many errors and misrepresentations and many issues raised by staff in lengthy submissions during the consultation period, have still not been addressed.
Senior management have decided to end all History provision permanently. Kingston University will no longer be a place where History is taught or researched. Management repeatedly emphasized how genuine was their commitment to ‘consultation’, then rejected every single one of the suggestions in the four-page History staff submission.
All remaining historians are facing compulsory redundancy. Claims have been made that History staff were given opportunities to propose ideas for curriculum development and new courses that they didn’t take up – these claims are false. Repeated attempts by History colleagues to engage with management have been simply ignored. Just what does management have against History at this university?
Management have asserted they wanted to avoid compulsory redundancies, yet there has been no meaningful consultation with UCU about avoiding, reducing or mitigating job losses (in breach of the Managing Organisation Restructure policy as well as the university’s statutory obligations under the relevant law provisions in TULCRA Section 188(4)). Redeployment opportunities have not been adequately explored. These staff are being rushed out the door despite their herculean efforts to provide quality teaching during the Covid pandemic.
Moreover, Kingston UCU strongly believes that employment law obligations related to staff with protected characteristics in redundancy situations may have been breached, making a mockery of equality and diversity commitments.
Staff in Media & Communications and Film Studies have lost 3.2FTE colleagues to voluntary redundancy, with an inevitable impact on the workloads of those remaining. No further staff reductions are envisaged by management “this year”, although this suggests this may be revisited in the very near future. No reference is made in the outcome document to the serious impact of this consultation on staff mental health and wellbeing.
Nor has detail been provided about arrangements for PhD students who will lose their supervisors. It’s been suggested to History PhD students that historian supervisors could be replaced by art & design historians (a majority of KU art & design historians signed a statement rejecting this). Another suggestion mooted was that the university could employ external supervisors on short-term contracts with comically low flat-rate remuneration.
Members of the Politics department met with the acting head of school on 30 June for the purpose of learning the results of a ‘consultation’ on plans to wind down the Politics department over the coming two years. This, although the substantive decision regarding the fate of the department – to close recruitment of UG students for the upcoming year – was taken by management prior to the beginning of ‘consultations’ without any input from staff or any substantial effort to help the department to improve its course offer.
Over the first 45-day ‘consultation’, staff were further kept in the dark regarding the target staff-student ratio or the number of jobs to be cut. Nonetheless, members collaborated to create a lengthy document that highlighted several proposals to revamp UG and PG politics provision. Only one proposal – that of merging with the Criminology & Sociology department – was accepted by management.
Several people have responded to the stress and disrespect on offer by taking VS. At the 30th June meeting, however, a further period of ‘consultation’ was announced, which will run from 1 to 31 July. While in theory, no staff are at risk of redundancy for the 2021/22 year (2.2 fte’s being lost through colleagues taking VS), job cuts will begin in 2022/23 with a reduction of 2.0 FTE from the previous year, and a further 0.0 to 3.0 FTE cut the year that follows (2023/24). Management say that cuts are to be offset by 3 ring-fenced posts in Economics and Business, and an additional 2 posts in Criminology and Sociology. Bizarrely, management are asking Politics staff to set out the criteria by which the limited competition for these posts will occur.
It is clear from KU22+ plans to focus on “eliminating courses ranked in the bottom decile nationally and reducing those ranked in the bottom quartile” that this is just the start of the course and job cuts, other courses across the university are assuredly being looked at.
For KSA, this is likely to be compounded by government proposals to cut funding for arts courses including performing arts, art and design, and media studies.
Talk to your colleagues in your department about these cuts. Build awareness and help build the branch.
Get involved by signing up to the activist discussion list, come forward to be a departmental contact or a rep.
Follow the campaigns on Twitter: @kingstonucu @uni_kingston @savekupolitics. Instagram: @kingstonucu @savekingstonuni @savekupolitics.
Ask colleagues in other institutions and professional associations to write to the VC (s.spier@kingston.ac.uk) and Board of Governors (KU-Secretariat@kingston.ac.uk) opposing compulsory redundancies, the withdrawal of History and the winding down of Politics.
Kingston staff have told local journalists at the Surrey Comet about how devastated and horrified they are by the neglect and indifference of management, whose catalogue of poor decisions have directly damaged the courses being closed, and who are refusing to set out what cuts to actual jobs they are proposing and what this will mean for students and staff who remain.
Professional associations have denounced the course closures including the Royal Historical Society, History UK, the Society for the Study of Labour History, the Political Studies Association, the British International Studies Association, and the Association for Contemporary European Studies. They have highlighted how the closure of these courses at universities like Kingston with many first-generation students and a high proportion of BAME,commuting and local students, limits access and participation and damages democracy.
The student-led campaigns #SaveKingstonUni and #SaveKUPolitics continue on apace, but the VC has refused to meet with students.
Over 500 supporters have signed the petition to stop the cuts at Kingston. Numerous UCU branches have shared their support online and at solidarity meetings.
These cuts are part of attacks across our sector on the arts, humanities and social sciences, London South Bank, Chester, Leicester, Aston and Sheffield are facing similar cuts. But there are also cuts in health and life sciences – Liverpool have started 3 weeks of strike action against redundancies (donate to their strike fund here: ww.ulivucunews.org.uk/hardship-fund) This is an ideological attack on higher education.
The only way management will back down if you, your co-workers and fellow students make them.
How you can stop the cuts at Kingston:
“Suspension of UG Politics Courses – who will be next?”
This was the headline from our last branch newsletter. Now we know who will be next as unfortunately colleagues in History, Film Studies and Media and Communication have been targeted in a course rationalisation process in KSA that will seek to form three new schools in that Faculty. History colleague FTE’s are to be reduced from 3 to 0 whilst colleagues in Film Studies and Media and Communication have been rather arbitrarily lumped together to find a reduction in FTE’s from 13.3 to 7.2.
Thus, there is the possibility of job losses for a significant number of our colleagues from different parts of the university. This is how management thanks us for working so hard over the last year in these truly extraordinary times and helping them to keep the university afloat. Clearly management does not have the best interests of their employees at heart and no amount of faux concern about stress and mental health issues on Staffspace can hide this.
This Wednesday 28th 3-5pm, you are invited to a Kingston UCU branch meeting to discuss recent management decisions affecting Politics, History, Media & Communication, and Film Cultures. As of last week, staff in each of these subject areas are currently in a 45 day consultation process – at the end of this process there is a serious risk of redundancies. There has been a failure by senior management to consult here which your branch regards as a breach of our trade union Recognition Agreement with the university and the Managing Organisational Restructures Procedure.
The purpose of this meeting will primarily be to discuss our collective response to these decisions.
This meeting will take place on Zoom – members have been emailed a calendar invite. If you haven’t received one, please Contact Us.
We hope you can make it. Please do not worry if you are only able to attend some of the meeting – we know it is a busy time for everyone.
National UCU has issued a statement condemning Kingston University’s decision to suspend recruitment its Politics, International Relations and Human Rights undergraduate courses for its 2021 intake.
UCU said it is concerned that the suspension could eventually result in the courses closing altogether with inevitable knock-on effects on students and staff, risking jobs in the department and damaging the learning prospects of politically engaged students. This in a time of increased political engagement amongst students and the wider community in terms of Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement, LGBTQ+ issues and the climate crisis agenda.
At an emergency branch meeting March 26th, Kingston UCU members voted unanimously to to oppose the decision to suspend recruitment to undergraduate courses in the Department of Politics, and any future redundancies, and to demand proper consultation as per our Trade Union Recognition Agreement which mandates that ‘operational decisions, especially those likely to affect the job prospects or security of particular groups or occupation’ should be subject to prior consultation.
We call on the university to commit to supporting the Department of Politics and its students and staff, and congratulate and thank Politics, International Relations & Human Rights students for the enormous initiative and creativity of their efforts to save the undergraduate course and the department.
We believe that Politics should not become a subject taught only at Russell Group universities and that it is vital that it continues to be taught to students from a wide range of backgrounds such as those at Kingston.
Read the motion in full here