Dissatisfaction Widespread Among FE Staff

A report published just a few days before today’s industrial action taken by members of the University and College Union (UCU), shows widespread dissatisfaction among FE staff. The report by the Learning and Skills Network (LSN), shows that:

• Only 39.1% of staff say that they would recommend their organisation as a good place to work and this drops to 31.1% among lecturers and teachers. Furthermore, many respondents (42.2%) said that they didn’t feel valued by their employer.
• A significant number of people (56%) reported that they don’t think they are adequately rewarded for their work. This rises to 60.9% among lecturers and teachers but drops to 34.6% among senior managers. By comparison, the majority of people (68.4%) say they are happy with their pension scheme.
• 21.9% of teachers and lecturers, and 35.8% of senior managers, say they are not able to take their full holiday entitlement.
• Only 7.4% of respondents do not work beyond their contracted hours. Out of the staff who said they often work beyond their contracted hours, 29% of teaching staff, 38% of managers and 63% of senior managers said they often worked more than 11 additional hours per week.
• 40% of people say that their organisation will tolerate managers or colleagues who bully others.
• Overall, 53.9% of people said they had been verbally abused by learners, with 37.4% of staff saying they had felt physically threatened by a learner.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the findings also reveal high levels of stress and job insecurity: Most staff (69.8%) say they feel too much stress in their job, with teaching staff and middle managers more likely than other groups to say they are stressed.

And reflecting the widespread instability caused by continual restructuring, 48% of staff said they do not feel they have job security, with teaching staff and middle managers feeling the least secure.

Further details can be found in the full LSN report, FE Colleges: the frontline under pressure.