Committee for Employment and Learning

OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard)

Briefing by University and College Union ()

14 October 2015 NORTHERN ASSEMBLY

Committee for Employment and Learning

Briefing by University and College Union (Ulster University)

14 October 2015

Members present for all or part of the proceedings: Mr Thomas Buchanan (Deputy Chairperson) Mr Sydney Anderson Mr David Hilditch Ms Anna Lo Mr Pat Ramsey

Witnesses: Mr John McCann Ulster University Dr Anthea Irwin University and College Union Dr Tracy Irwin University and College Union Dr Lucy Michael University and College Union Dr Linda Moore University and College Union

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): I welcome Dr Anthea Irwin, Dr Tracy Irwin, Dr Linda Moore and Dr Lucy Michael. You will have up to 10 minutes to make a presentation, and then we will open up the session for questions.

Dr Anthea Irwin (University and College Union): I will pass round a slightly extended paper. We sent you a short briefing paper of a couple of pages, but we wanted to include some illustrations, examples and case studies that we will refer to today for your future reference.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): I note that you have an extra witness who is not on our sheet: I invite you to introduce him and tell us who he is, what he does and where he is from.

Mr Ramsey: They slipped him in. [Laughter.]

Dr A Irwin: This is my colleague, John McCann, who is a lecturer in modern languages. We thought that, while we would be presenting an overall viewpoint and our challenges to what is happening currently at Ulster University (UU), we would invite John along to give you a snapshot and illustration of what is occurring in his area that might aid you. We apologise: we thought that that had been communicated to you.

Thank you very much for having us today and for hearing what we have to say. We are well aware of the situation that Ulster University management is in with the cuts that have been handed down, and we are well aware of the challenges that you and your colleagues have faced. What we want to present today is not about those cuts per se but about how our university management is choosing to implement those cuts. We believe that our university management had choices in what they did and what they proposed to do and that those choices have been flawed.

1 We believe that our management should work in partnership with us as a trade union and with other recognised trade unions to look for creative ways and fair ways to get through difficult periods such as this. What we have faced, though, is no meaningful consultation whatever by our management, a lack of rationale and evidence for their proposals and the bullying of our members. We have been forced, therefore, to explore avenues other than trying to consult them meaningfully. As you probably know, we have entered dispute, and we are here today to ask you to seriously consider, once you have heard what we have to say, calling them in and asking them to account for themselves. What we see is the mismanagement of a process that is not adhering to its own university statutes and is putting at risk the breadth of education we offer our young people, our widening access mission and the development of our communities and economy.

The university's statutes decree that university management must attempt to avoid compulsory redundancy, and that is not what we have seen. Management may claim that they are in and around a voluntary severance and are not engaging with compulsory redundancies in the legal sense. However, many of the redundancies that we face will, in effect, be compulsory. They cannot be seen as anything else because the voluntary severance scheme (VSS) has been opened up only to targeted members of staff in targeted areas. In some cases, it has been offered only to colleagues in a subject area who are on a specific campus or subsections of a subject area where all the colleagues teach across a range of courses. It is targeted, is unfair and is bullying our members.

We have concerns that the university has not equality-proofed its proposals. They have not provided us with evidence of that, regardless of us requesting the document time and time again. We have called on them to suspend the severance scheme to allow for meaningful consultation. They have refused to do so.

Prior to this, the closure of courses such as housing management and transportation — successful courses — was announced earlier this year. The university is adding to that list of casualties courses in languages and maths and removing provision on specific campuses for several other subject areas. It is also cutting significant proportions of staff from other subject areas.

The university's statutes and its redundancy policy, which is based on redundancy law, require it not just to avoid redundancies but to reduce their numbers and mitigate the effects of them. We are concerned for the staff left behind and, indeed, the students and the quality of their experience and access to education.

We knew that the cuts were coming. We had a headline announcement in June about numbers. On 31 August, the university announced what it called its proposals. However, rather than entering into meaningful consultation on those, the university immediately opened a voluntary severance scheme to the targeted colleagues. The voluntary severance scheme was not agreed and the proposals at that stage were only verbal. We did not have written documentation or evidence. When we do research or ask students to write assignments, we expect evidence: we have not had that from our management, who are running the university. We have not seen budgets, staff:student ratios, national student survey results, employability figures or research excellence framework (REF) returns or scores. Claims are being made about the proposals and the choices that have been made, yet we have not seen the evidence.

Although the university was calling these "proposals", it immediately took the courses that it proposed to close off the UCAS system so that young people could not see them. Staff were instructed not to mention them at open days, and they were taken off prospectuses. There is no attempt there to engage in any meaningful consultation with us when this is being presented and pushed through as a fait accompli.

The voluntary severance scheme has a closing deadline of 30 October, which, we feel, is far too short and is bullying our members because it leaves no space to consult, even if there was the will to consult. Staff are being told that, as soon as the deadline passes, if not enough have agreed to go voluntarily, we will move to compulsory redundancies. We really feel that that is a gun to staff's head. They are scared. In some cases, they feel that they have absolutely no choice if their course is going. We are deeply concerned about that.

Many of the courses proposed for closure are recruiting well, have excellent employability and good student feedback. There are many issues and courses that we could discuss. We will give you illustrations and can happily provide you with further evidence. It is fair to say that we have had a very hard job, because we are basing all of this on our scrutiny of proposals that are unevidenced and lack rationale.

2 The first thing to say is that there is a lack of strategic vision and rationale for the cuts. We are committed, as our vice has told us he is, to the civic university, and we believe that Ulster University should contribute to the economic, social and cultural life of , but it seems clear to us that this will not happen. This will be detrimentally affected by some of the proposals, such as the closure of the school of modern languages, which my colleague John will talk about later. In March this year, the university management presented a paper to DETI on growing the economy, foreign investment and the importance of modern languages. There seems to be an extreme contradiction, and we are not entirely sure what has changed between March and now for the university to suddenly decide to close down its languages provision completely. It seems exceptionally short-sighted. Those courses recruit above the national average, have very good student feedback and are a really important minor topic for many students studying business, STEM subjects and so on. They make those students more employable and make us more attractive for investment. There are also important community courses attached to the school of modern languages, and we will lose those. Mathematics is another obvious STEM area that has been stated in your strategic priorities, yet we are seeing the loss of 70 places in an area that was developing itself and was developing new applied mathematics courses that have not been given a chance to thrive.

Another thing that we are concerned about is widening access for our students. We have been told that the university has to think about economies of scale and that it has to consolidate between its four campuses. That may be one argument, but a university such as Ulster has a mission to widen access to all people in this region. It does not fit a widening access remit if a student can no longer attend a course on their local campus. We have specific examples of that. For example, sociology is being pulled at Magee. It is all moving to and being consolidated on the Jordanstown campus. Students and potential students from FE have already told us that this will make it impossible for them to move on to HE because they cannot afford the time or money for the commute etc. We have a similar situation with psychology, which is being consolidated at Coleraine. Again, that is another course that is being pulled out of Magee, and there are serious concerns about those types of courses in that area of our region. Indeed, one third of students who complete an access course in psychology at North West Regional College go on to do a psychology course at Ulster at Magee. Where will those students go?

We are concerned about the quality of student experience; indeed, so is our students' union, which, I know, you will hear from next week. For example, courses that are being shut still have to be taught out, and, in many cases, staff are being asked or expected to come back and teach their students out on hourly contracts at an absolute fraction of what they had been paid previously. That makes us question whether those posts are even redundant. Indeed, in a situation where we have consolidation on one campus, students studying those subjects on the other campuses will not, as it rolls out, have any full-time staff, full-time academic administration support or, indeed, pastoral support, which is so important in the context of widening access.

We are worried about inconsistencies in applying the statistics and matrices. As I said, we have not been provided with them, but we have been provided with a narrative or rationale — or a lack of it — and we are basing it on that. We can see that the application of the matrices, such as the national student survey, REF results, employability etc, seem to be being used selectively. In some cases, they are being used incorrectly, and there is certainly a lack of transparency on how they are being used. For example, management claims that the interior design course is receiving the lowest number of external applications, whereas colleagues refute that and claim that it has been receiving the highest number of applications in the school over the past three years. Languages has really high national student survey results in the 90s, and interior design has a 100% student employability record. Using REF returns as a measure of academic success is also problematic, because, again, it is selective. We have areas where REF is being used as a metric. We have other areas where 100% of the staff who are threatened were in the last REF return. It is all very confusing, and, of course, we have to think about the wider context of support for staff in research, teaching workloads and all of the context that surrounds that.

We are also concerned that the detail of the maximum student number (MaSN) cuts that we see in the proposals, even though they are slightly unclear, seems to be over and above the headline figure of 1,200 that was initially announced. It seems to be above that by a considerable amount, maybe up to a third, on our additions. We have loss of economic impact. We have the brain drain, which we are all well aware of. Students who are forced to go are very unlikely to come back to us, so that is another consideration.

Members, I want to leave us enough time for my colleagues to speak and to answer your questions and so on. We hope that we have given you an outline of the mismanagement of this process at

3 Ulster at the present time. We recognise that our management has to work within a curtailed budget, but we feel that the proposals are not commensurate with the strategic vision that, indeed, our own vice chancellor holds, which is deeply confusing. He appears to be trying to step back. He is refusing to consult with us, and he is basically saying that we should go and speak to HR and is not consulting with us. We have a letter that we can leave with you if you would like to read more about that. We are very concerned about his role and his vision.

We have tried to highlight the inadequacies, and we have made a suggestion. We have said, "Open the VSS up to all staff. Scope it, be creative, look around and see if there are better ways to deal with this that are not going to be so punitive to our colleagues and our students and, indeed, our future students". We are academics. We are clever people, and we would have loved to be consulted properly and to discuss this with our management. We are very sad that we have not been. We are a trade union, and we have to think about the rights of our members, and we have to take action on that.

Thank you very much for listening to us. I will now open up to my colleagues and to you for further comments. Do you have time to hear from my colleague John about his specific experience?

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): Yes, we will do that.

Mr John McCann (Ulster University): Thank you very much, indeed, Mr Chairman and members of the Committee. One of the rationales for the changes is consolidation. The disappearance of modern languages from the university follows a consolidation. I used to be at the Magee campus, and modern languages were moved to Coleraine a few years ago. I and my colleague Alvaro Jaspe in Spanish moved with it. We did so willingly to consolidate and to build on language provision. Our previous dean received an assurance from the then vice chancellor that he would be able to build up the faculty: now we are faced with the situation where modern languages is to be eradicated, not consolidated. That is far and away the most drastic change that is being brought into the university. It is short-sighted. It is contradictory. The vice chancellor himself has spoken of a "disconnect", and that is against the background of UU elaborating principles that include the preparation of students to work, study and live in an international context. It may be possible to work, live and study abroad if you are in an English-speaking environment, but you are better equipped to take advantage of the opportunities if you can speak a modern language. We provide the widest range of advanced teaching in modern languages in the Province. We teach French, Spanish, German — the only place in Northern Ireland to do so — and we are the only place in Northern Ireland for Mandarin Chinese, because we host the Confucius Institute.

We recognise that there are problems and that we need to be creative. On 19 June, my head of school, Dr Barr, proposed a reconfiguration of the modern language offer to take into account the budgetary restraints, so that we would open up our provision to the university as a whole, to the wider community, as we are already doing, and to manage the international offer that we have and the Confucius Institute. That was turned down. We are prepared to be flexible, but the management's attitude is "No". They will shut us down on 30 April. That means that the school will cease to exist. They propose bringing us back to teach part-time hours or on partial contracts. That will sell the students short, because, unless there is administrative support, the things that are taken for granted, such as studies advice, pastoral support while on their year abroad, the communication of marks, the movement of marks from one committee to the other so that they can be properly scrutinised and approved and other things of that nature will not take place. They also propose, as my colleague said, to pay the bulk of us on hourly contracts. Those of us who live in will find that it takes an hour to travel to Coleraine and an hour to travel back; if we are doing two hours' teaching, it is not economically viable.

They have not thought through the implications of the changes in modern languages. They are very short-sighted. Mr Johnson, the Minister at Westminster for higher education, is proposing that universities be scrutinised on the quality of their teaching: modern languages has a very good record in the quality of its teaching and in employability. We are first in the faculty for employability and fourth in the university for graduate employability. That expertise will be lost and lost for good. Not only that, the university seems to be moving away from the stated vision of the Westminster Government — I am sure that the Stormont Government have a similar view — for enhancing the impact of university on the economy.

On Monday 12 October, Fujitsu, a large corporation, approached the head of school, saying, "Could we meet? We would like you to offer your expertise to our HR department to improve their language skills". We are told that we are surplus to requirements: Fujitsu does not seem to think so. I will leave it there.

4 Dr A Irwin: Thank you very much, John. That gives you one snapshot; there are many others. My colleagues and I will welcome any of your queries or questions.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): Thank you very much for that. What you are saying is that there has been no door opened with the management for discussion with you folk.

Dr A Irwin: No; there has been no meaningful consultation whatever. The proposals were announced on one date, and we did not get any written version of them until two weeks later. However, immediately on them being announced, the voluntary severance scheme was opened up and the courses were taken off UCAS and the prospectuses etc. Regardless of anything that our management might try to call consultation, there has been no meaningful consultation because they have already been pushed through as a fait accompli —

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): Have you sought any meetings with the management?

Dr A Irwin: Absolutely, we have. We have a letter here that we are happy to leave with you. We have sought several meetings with our vice chancellor, who is refusing to meet us and is handing us over to HR. That flies in the face of commitments from Paddy Nixon, our new vice chancellor, and our previous vice chancellor, Richard Barnett, who committed to vice chancellor meetings with the University and College Union (UCU) to explore and try to deal creatively with the cuts that we knew were coming.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): How is this affecting the staff?

Dr Tracy Irwin (University and College Union): I think that John would tell you more than anyone that they are very demoralised. They are concerned that their colleagues will lose their jobs. They might lose their jobs. If they are left with their job, they will perhaps have to move and travel, as John said, from one campus to another. Students in sociology, for example, might have to relocate to Jordanstown from Magee. They could then face another relocation once our campus comes on board. There is a lot of almost despair, in many ways, even across non-affected areas, because we realise that these are not the last of the cuts; there will probably be more.

Dr Linda Moore (University and College Union): It is confusing and frustrating for people. They do not know what to do. There is a deadline of 30 October before which you have to express your interest in voluntary severance. For some courses, like John's, you know that your course is closing, so you are frustrated. You are being told that it is voluntary, but you know that there is no job there for you. For others, if you are perhaps losing two members of a team, people will think, "Well, if I don't go for the voluntary severance, is my head going to be on the block? What are the criteria for deciding who's going?". People do not know. They are confused because they have no idea whether they should put themselves forward for that or whether they will be made redundant anyway. There is so little information for people.

Dr Lucy Michael (University and College Union): It is worth saying that the impact on staff has already been visible to students. All of this took place at the start of term as the students were starting to come back. That caused extremely high levels of stress in the first few weeks of term, which also made it impossible for us to engage fully with the information that we were receiving. The committee has done an awful lot of work beyond that, but our students are saying, "We're noticing a difference. We notice that the staff are not as open to us walking in. They seem distracted. They seem tired. They seem exhausted". It is true that the health impact on our colleagues is already very visible.

Mr John McCann: I had a conversation with the students earlier in the week. They were asking what was going to happen. Some of them have been written to by the vice chancellor and told that the changes will in no way compromise the quality of the student experience. Some of them seemed to take that at face value; they assumed that, somehow, we would still be in place. I pointed out that we did not know what was going to happen after 30 April and that, as far as I was concerned, I would not be there. The realisation hit them that the person teaching the module and setting the examination would not be the person marking and moderating the examination; it would be a part-timer from goodness knows where. They could be from the department or outside. That would be the person scrutinising it. This is something that an external examiner might question. You cannot assume that the external examiner will blithely accept this. One of the students said very pithily, "So, what's the point of doing the degree, then?". This is someone who will have racked up three or four years of fees — they have a year abroad — and loans to pay off. He has been faced with this at the last moment,

5 for the sake of a few weeks. He says, "What's the point?". He made the long-term commitment: the university has not shown the same commitment to them.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): What has the intake to the school of modern languages been like over the past three or four years? Has it increased? The other issue is this: what are the degrees like coming out?

Mr John McCann: There is an overall decline in the pool of applicants for modern languages in the UK as a whole. The University Council of Modern Languages estimates that 1% of the students doing an A level in a modern language go on to study it at third level. Last year, there were 1,000 students in Northern Ireland taking A-level French. We have 30 students in first-year French modules. That is way above — three times — the national average. We also have 12 students taking French as for the first time, giving an intake of 42. We were set a target of 28. We have exceeded — we were allowed to exceed, which is the curious thing — that target by 10 students. In other words, the university authorities knew that the course was closing and yet permitted the school to recruit above its target. That is a curious state of affairs, to say the least. That is the answer to the first question. What was your second?

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): What were the results like, for students coming out the other end?

Mr John McCann: Our retention figures are very good, particularly with regard to the two main languages: French and Spanish. Chinese has yet to make much of an impact because we are still at the beginning. However, its figures are good as well. I do not have exact figures, but most of the students score a 2:1 or a first.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): You said that you took 10 students over the prescribed limit for French.

Mr John McCann: Over the school as a whole.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): Yes. How are the other languages doing? Do you have many students studying them? You talked about French, but what about the other languages?

Mr John McCann: It is about the same number studying Spanish. Northern Ireland has always had a very strong tradition of studying Spanish. It is stronger here than in the rest of the , and I sometimes think that that is because there are curious historical links with Spain, through the schools, for example. We are also the only place where you can study German, and those numbers have been small historically. That is what caused Queen's to close it. This year, we have a much healthier number of German entrants; I think it is in the range of 15, but do not quote me on that. The status of Chinese is different, because people will not have studied it at A level. What we attempted to do through our applied languages degree — it seemed to be quite successful — was to thread Chinese through the other languages so that the people studying it would be those who had language experience and could therefore benefit from it.

We used the applied languages degree and the other language offerings as a support mechanism for this very important language, with China still emerging as an important economy. Although they are going to keep the Confucius Institute and retain the lecturer in Chinese who is seconded from Confucius, if French, Spanish and German disappear, then support for Chinese will not be there and we will not be able to attract the kind of students who will benefit from the Chinese offer.

Mr Ramsey: You are making a very important presentation, but it is depressing, I have to say. On a personal note, good friends in Magee College are distressed, hurt and angered by this. It is just soul- destroying for them at the present time.

John has made a passionate presentation on the history of modern languages, moving from Magee to Coleraine on a solution basis. They thought that this would be a long-term solution, so it is disappointing. We know that, once the trigger has commenced on third-level language provision, it starts at the primary school and the secondary school for young people preparing. I have a daughter who is particularly good at Spanish and is preparing for GCSE. Why would you encourage her to go down that route, if there is nothing at the other end? There is a trigger there; and it will have a domino effect in the long term, because, once you lose a school, there is no going back. Once you lose the

6 capacity, it cannot be revisited. Through all the plans that we have for the organisation of Magee, it will not occur once you lose it. I am terribly worried that the senior managers are showing a lack of respect for you.

Dr A Irwin: Absolutely, that is what people feel. That is one of the reasons why people are so demoralised.

Mr Ramsey: We tried to articulate this at a meeting with the Minister. Claire argued very strongly for the language school. Again, I fail to understand: the Minister's easy way out, as always; is to say "They are arm's-length bodies. Let them deal with it themselves." In fairness, though, the Minister has a terrible dilemma, because third-level education is the driver of the economy, and we are forced to have cutbacks.

Paddy Nixon is before the Committee next week. What is the big question? I talk to a lot of the lecturers in psychology in Magee, and they are absolutely gutted because of the elevation they have made, not just in student numbers, but on mental health and suicide awareness. Siobhan O'Neill, in particular, is making inroads with the healthcare trust. The fact is that 50% of the student body going to Magee are from the Derry/ Donegal/Tyrone area. They would never go to Coleraine; that is the reality. I do not understand the logic.

If Paddy Nixon were here, he might ask, "Well, Pat Ramsey, what would you cut?". Clearly, there are circumstances where a reduction has to kick in, and I am trying to play devil's advocate, but I do not know who thought a lot of these issues out, what the logic behind them was or what the rationale was. I fail to understand.

There is a valid point here, in that we are all aware of the voluntary exit scheme across the Civil Service at the moment. It is an open call — whether people work in DHSSPS, Social Development, the social security office or the Housing Executive, they can come forward. The difference here is that this is targeted and is targeted at individuals who have no option. It is called "voluntary redundancy", but, in many ways, they are out of a job through forced redundancy. We have to say that.

Dr T Irwin: Yes, absolutely.

Mr Ramsey: We want to scrutinise Paddy Nixon in order to get as much out of him as we can, so, what do you want us to ask him?

Dr A Irwin: I think — my colleagues will come in on this as well — that there are three things. He needs to be asked why he is not consulting the recognised trade unions in his institution, because, legally he should do that according to the statutes of the university that he is in charge of. Why is he not doing that? Why is he not engaging with us and looking for creative ways around this? He also needs to be asked where the rationale and evidence is. We have been asking for that all along. It is all very well to say things to us and then give us a narrative on a piece of paper claiming various things about research excellence frameworks, staff:student ratios, the national student survey and so on without any spreadsheets, without any figures, without any budgets. As I said, he would expect that of us and he and we would expect it of our students, so where is the evidence and the rationale? Also, I would like him to be challenged on his vision of a civic university, because, as we have said, we are committed to that. He tells us and says publicly that he is committed to that, so where in the proposals would various things that have been talked about —

Mr Ramsey: Is there a statutory obligation on the university to carry out an equality impact assessment? Has that been done?

Dr Moore: They tell us that they have equality-screened it and that it has been screened out. Now, we have asked them on several occasions, which you will not be surprised at, for a copy of this equality screening in writing, and they have yet to provide it, so we have no idea what the impact of this is on different groups and equality groupings.

Mr Ramsey: In listening to and reflecting on Stranmillis's presentation — maybe somebody will tell me differently after I say this — I thought that it seemed to be a model of good practice in how they reduced the number of staff to meet the immediate needs of the economy. They did not look wholesale at courses and at reducing this and that; they seemed to do things right. They consulted

7 staff, considered early retirement and medical grounds. Is that the best way forward? Did Stranmillis perform well regarding that model?

Dr Moore: I do not think that we should comment on another process that we have not studied.

Mr Ramsey: I can.

Dr Moore: The process, as you said, needs to be opened up to all staff. It would be a scoping exercise; there is no commitment involved. You are talking about an expression of interest that does not tie the university down to anything. That would, at least, let them know whether there are people who would go willingly. We would ask for this to be opened up as a scoping exercise in the first place and for an extension of the deadline. These are obviously difficult decisions, but we are saying that the information is not here. It seems like they are picking and choosing. Some faculties are saying that REF is a big thing, some are saying that it is employability and some are saying that student satisfaction is important. We want to see a document that lays all that down for all these courses.

Mr Ramsey: I am personally sympathetic and wish you well in your deliberations. I hope that you can overturn something. I think that the deadline is 30 October.

Dr Moore: There is one thing that is not here. They have given us a short document saying what is happening faculty by faculty, but there is nothing on a campus-by-campus basis. As far as we can see, there is no written bit of paper telling us what this means for Magee or Coleraine. There is nothing like that. It is as if they have asked each dean to prepare their own piece. There is nothing for the university; there is no strategy across the board. That is what we want them to produce so that we can look at that and be consulted on it. How can you be consulted on something when, as the chair said, it has already been announced?

Mr Ramsey: It is very unfair.

Dr Moore: The courses have already closed.

Ms Lo: I understand your frustration and you have my sympathy. It is important that you have your staff on board with you through difficult times. You are all sensible people, as you say. You are clever, educated people and your heart is with the students and the university. You do not want to work against them, but you are being pushed. I can understand that.

I am acting as a devil's advocate again. You have said that they are targeting staff through the severance scheme, but if they are closing a whole department then they have to target those lecturers to go. I do not agree with them, but if they are closing a whole department it does not make sense for a university to say that it just does not teach languages. That is just crazy. That is maybe why they are targeting staff for redundancy or severance.

Mr John McCann: Modern languages is, in some sense, an exception. In other areas, you could say that, if you opened the scheme to everybody, you could then start moving people around the chess board. However, with modern languages, we really have the gun to our head. Your question is well- founded: it is a good example of management creating a problem where there need not necessarily have been one.

I am 59 years old, and I will soon be 60. To be honest, ladies and gentlemen, I am here pleading the case for modern languages, but the package is attractive to me personally. If they had opened it to everybody, I would probably have been among those putting their hand up. I have another colleague who, for a number of years, has been, we think, hearing the call to other vocations. He might very well have accepted a package as a launch to another situation. We were moving towards a case where there were people in modern languages, for example, who were prepared to hold their hand up because the conditions were right. As well as that, the head of school put forward proposals for slimming down the school of modern languages and generating additional income from our community courses, which are highly successful. We have taught courses for Michelin and the Chamber of Commerce, and Fujitsu is keen to engage. We also have the Confucius Institute and the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning (EuroCALL).

Ms Lo: Did Fujitsu ask you to teach Japanese?

8 Mr J McCann: I think it probably wants to teach European languages to its HR staff.

Dr A Irwin: I want to say a little more about the targeting that I tried to put across with a lot of other information in the paper. It is not simply a case of targeting specific areas. My colleagues may be able to give more detail from their own area, but, in some subject areas, the voluntary severance scheme is being opened only to colleagues in specific campuses, which is even more targeted. Even if the university management is arguing for consolidation, why is the scheme not open to everyone in that subject area?

Equally, we have other situations. I am in the faculty of social sciences, and in some areas in that faculty the scheme is being opened only to subsections of larger subject areas, when, in fact, those staff have skills in a range of areas and teach across a range of courses. It is even more targeted than just subject areas.

Dr T Irwin: One example is the school of computing and maths, in which just the maths department in Jordanstown is being targeted and the five lecturers there are the only five who have been offered the voluntary severance scheme. Others in that school teach elements of maths as part of other computing and engineering degrees, but they are not being asked to go. It is only those five specialist maths people. It is very targeted and very clear that those are the five people they want to go. There are 12 staff members there. There may be others who want to go, but they are not being offered the opportunity. I hope that this explains it in a bit more detail.

Ms Lo: It also does not make sense to move sociology from Coleraine to Jordanstown and then to Belfast.

Dr T Irwin: Staff have to make big life-changing decisions for their families, with relocation, commuting and the time that that takes and the toll it takes on your health and on your family.

Dr Michael: Perhaps I can give you a useful comment about sociology. We have just been through a revalidation process in sociology. It is a very lengthy process: it takes around a year and is just being completed. It has to be done every five years, and it ensures that degrees are of adequate quality. External examiners look through it and an external panel is involved. It is a lot of work. We have just been through that with the sociology degree at Jordanstown and Magee. Throughout the process, the university put us under pressure to make the degrees at Jordanstown and Magee look exactly the same. We were then told that, with the cuts, they were consolidating — a term that we refute — sociology provision at Jordanstown, with a view to moving it to Belfast. What they are, in fact, doing is simply cutting the sociology degree at Magee.

They have offered the VSS across our team at Jordanstown and Magee, which is, at least slightly more open than some other teams, but, in reality, they have failed to allow us any creativity in thinking about it. We have slightly different expertise on the two campuses. There are, for example, experts in the sociology of health and exercise and who contribute to the BSc in physical activity, which is a very well-thought-of degree. They also contribute to the MSc in applied peace and conflict studies and to early years education. So, they contribute in their expert areas, but that is simply being cut.

Consolidation does not mean moving any of that expertise, the courses or any of the provision or community engagement to Jordanstown. It simply means cutting it. Consolidation is a false label to apply to that. There is no consolidation of sociology. Simply put, whatever lecturers are left after the voluntary or compulsory redundancies will, by default, move to Jordanstown. That is all that consolidation means to sociology.

We were denied the opportunity to look at our provision and say that rather than removing all the writing subjects from Derry — we take in large numbers of widening access students, produce the highest difference between the entry level grades and the final level grades and were the highest performing sociology department in the UK this year in the national student satisfaction survey — they have simply decided to cut sociology at Magee with no explanation and no consultation. This shows you how confused we are about the rationale on which it is based.

Ms Lo: It just does not make sense. How much of it was to do with Richard Barnett going and the vacuum that was left? Paddy Nixon is coming next week. I cannot blame the poor man. I think that he only took over in July.

9 Dr Moore: Obviously, this was planned before the new VC took office. Our concern is that, listening to the new VC when he went round doing talks, he almost gave the impression that he would have a fresh start once all this is over. Our view is that this is on his watch, it is his responsibility now and he needs to take ownership of it.

Dr T Irwin: We asked to meet him, and he said no. If he would meet us, we could try to put some of those points to him.

Ms Lo: What is your next step?

Mr John McCann: I want to add to that, and this is important in light of what you said. When they made the initial announcement of the changes, Professor Alastair Adair, the acting vice chancellor, said that Professor Paddy Nixon was being consulted about the process. Although he was not formally employed, he was consulted. He knew what was happening, and he had input. I imagine that a vice chancellor designate would have considerable input.

Dr T Irwin: As a vice chancellor of a big organisation such as the university, he cannot just step aside and say, "This happened before I came in, so I just have to implement it". He obviously has to set the strategic vision, and that is the issue that we have. What he says and what is happening do not match.

Dr A Irwin: You asked what our next step is. Our frustration is that we feel that we have tried to take many, many steps and that it is our university management that is out of step with us. Good industrial relations would give you a partnership, and we would have been discussing that all along. We really feel, if it is not too cheeky an answer, that the next step has to be management consulting us. Otherwise, we feel that we keep being forced, step by step, into dispute, for example, and into anything else that might arise from that. That is not what we want, and it is not what should be happening.

Ms Lo: You mentioned the screening process and being screened out, which is ridiculous. It is such an important issue. Would it help to go to the Equality Commission about that?

Dr Moore: That is one of the things that we discussed, and we will think about it. First of all, we would like to see the document and the screening. It does not seem to be a lot to ask management for the screening document.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): OK, Anna. We are running very tight for time, so I have to cut you there.

Mr Anderson: I will be brief. Thank you very much for your presentation. What you tell us is rather unusual, in that there has been little or no consultation up to now. That is unusual to say the least, and I will leave it at that.

You said that one way of getting round this would be to open up the voluntary severance scheme. Is that a cure for all ills? I think you said that the practical way of doing something here would be to do that. How would that affect the campuses going forward? What knock-on effect would there be if that were opened up?

Dr A Irwin: It is not a cure for all ills, but it is a first step. It is an openness to consulting and discussing and being creative. If you open it up to everyone, as colleagues have said, that does not mean that all those people will get to go, necessarily. There still needs to be a strategy and a rationale within that to look at the sustainability of subject areas —

Mr Anderson: Can you see that as a possible way of solving a lot of the issues?

Dr A Irwin: Absolutely. Even if you have more colleagues in one area who would be prepared to go than another, we should be open to flexibility as well. There are some areas, such as modern languages, where that is your area, and there are other areas where there might be flexibility if people moved around the faculty and inputted — loosely spoken — with different expertise.

Mr Anderson: Is that something that you wish to move forward on in consultation with the university?

10 Dr T Irwin: Yes. The university tells us that it needs to make these cuts in order to make savings. If the voluntary scheme were opened up, we could see who wants to go and calculate the savings that that would make. The university is actually reconfiguring, and the savings bit seems to be quite separate from what they say about reconfiguration. If we opened up the voluntary severance scheme and saw who volunteered and how much savings that would make, we would be in a better position to look at what else needs to be done to make those savings and, as Anthea said, to look at it —

Mr Anderson: Have you put forward that suggestion?

Dr A Irwin: Yes, many, many times.

Mr Anderson: What was the response?

Dr T Irwin: No.

Mr Anderson: Just a straight "No". Was that in writing or verbally?

Dr T Irwin: We have it in writing that they would not.

Mr Anderson: You obviously have a letter that you will leave with us.

Dr T Irwin: They will not even extend the deadline. Again, we are asking people to make life- changing and career-changing decisions by 30 October. They will not even extend the deadline.

Mr Anderson: That is rather unusual in negotiations. I will leave it at that, Chair, as I know that we are pushed for time. I just want to clarify that you would see that as a big step.

Dr A Irwin: Absolutely. A big first step to scope things out.

Mr Anderson: Not a cure for all, but a big first step.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): Thank you for coming today. We have listened to your concerns and have heard the frustration that is coming through. The lack of consultation is certainly a big issue. Thank you for presenting to us and for taking questions. No doubt, we will hear from you in the future.

Dr A Irwin: Absolutely. Thank you all very much for listening to us and for that very productive discussion. We will leave you our latest communication with Paddy Nixon.

11