Warwick essay markers under pressure

The Boar has been speaking to academic staff and markers to find out more about the terms and conditions which different departments offer to tutors for marking work.

At the Sociology department, marking summative essays comes at a rate of £5 per script. With some modules involving 5,000 word assessed essays, tutors would have to mark 6,700 words per hour to make minimum wage, and over 20,000 words to reach the standard teaching rate of £20/hour.

The investigation follows a similar one at King’s College London, which revealed that “some teachers are expected to mark 9,000 words per hour” and that work is “barely checked”.

Rate of pay is also “just above £5” in the Philosophy department, though assignments cap out at 2500 words. According to this tutor, the marking rate was fixed as a proportion of the teaching rate, even though departmental administrators said: “This is not supposed to reflect the amount of time we spend marking”.

In many departments, no differentiation is made on the length of essays, meaning, as one marker told the Boar: “Potentially, we’re supposed to be marking as many as 15,000 words per hour.”
Another tutor described this system as “awful” as it was “encouraging tutors to pay as little attention to each individual essay as possible.”

Mario Cuenda García, a first-year Philosophy, Politics and Economics student, said: “I feel that our essays may be corrected in a hurry, without being given the personal attention a written work should deserve.

“The demanding targets remind me of the working chains in factories.”

Some departments do not pay per hour or per essay for marking: the departments of Film and Television, English and French all incorporate an ‘element’ of marking in what they pay for each hour of teaching.

“By the time essays are actually handed in, we’ve already been paid everything we’re going to get paid”, a tutor in one of these three departments remarked, adding that: “Marking feels like it’s being done for nothing”.

Katie Crosson, a first-year Film student, commented: “I am fully aware that my degree does not cost £9000 to run. It’s time to see that horrendous sum of money go to the people who deserve fair pay for their service to students and society”.

Our investigation also revealed that, this year, the English department has offered £3 per script for additional examination marking. The rate is unadjusted for inflation and has been fixed since 2002.

In the English and French departments, another tutor commented: “You are working on the assumption that 3 exam scripts will be marked in an hour”.

According to one academic in the Department of Politics and International Studies, in his department, the £3 rate per script was changed to £5 at the start of this academic year.

One marker said earning enough money to live on meant “overcoming your own instinct to give everything you can to your students.”

Ed Stevenette, a second-year History undergraduate, told the Boar that “marking pay at Warwick is indicative of the devaluation of education at Warwick, with spending at the frontline of academia kept to a bare minimum.”

This also raises several concerns regarding the wellbeing of markers. A 2012 survey by UCU revealed 85% of Warwick respondents worked over 40 hours a week, with 40% facing a 50 hour workweek.

In the same survey, half said they had unrealistic time pressures and 3 in 5 said they neglected some tasks because they have too much to do. Warwick fared worse than the university average.

The Students’ Union allegedly “condemns these work practices which undervalue the hard work of staff at Warwick”, and continued that they have “consistently made a stand on” the issue.

Head of press and policy for the University, Peter Dunn, said: “This is exactly why the Teach Higher department is being created.”

He went on to add that TeachHigher would create “university wide processes [such] that we can ensure our fair, transparent, consistent [remuneration] and which remunerate people for all the time required to deliver a task”.

TeachHigher is an academic services department being piloted at Warwick next year. It recently sparked national controversy for allegedly worsening work conditions among hourly paid teachers.

Mr Dunn told the Boar that wages under TeachHigher, educators would be paid based on “national academic pay standards”.

He continued that a consultation was to occur on how to run the scheme in order to develop a common pay policy across all departments.

TeachHigher is expected to be introduced to the University next academic year, 2015-16.