One of our former branch members wrote this incredibly powerful reflection on the three days of strike action taken in December 2021, and the transformative power that we are fighting to return to higher education. Thanks to them for sharing it with us, and thanks to everyone who is part of the fight to make higher education a transformative space once again.

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Striking is how the light gets in. It reminds us of all the positive things about working in education, that there are people on the ground trying to circumvent ‘the system’ and do good work. It is at once exhausting and energising. These are not original thoughts by any means though, and many similar words have been written in the past, these are mine.

One specific encounter in the last three days has reminded me that education is special and worth fighting for on every level. I was in an online rally on Thursday, with some external guest speakers. One speaker was from a university currently in local dispute, in addition to our national one. He was reporting live, from the picket which felt so exciting, a moment from the ‘front line’ for those of use joining remotely. His name seemed vaguely familiar, which I suppose isn’t unusual these days. Social media in particular has widened the number of people I know by name only, but it gradually dawned on me that we had actually met in real life. A very long time ago, I used to be a teacher and this articulate and passionate speaker, eloquently talking about the local dispute, had been a shy introverted teenager in the very first GCSE History class that I taught. His memory of our encounter is likely different to mine, so I describe it below with this disclaimer, but this is how it showed itself to me.

Education has within its power to be transformative as well as being frustrating, and beaming out from a London picket, here was a reminder of both of those things. As well as being shy and introverted, the teenager I taught was also super-smart. I remember clearly, even back then, my frustration at a GCSE exam marking scheme that relied on hoop jumping and did not leave room for those able to think beyond it. I remember explaining, time after time, that while this or that answer was well-argued and ‘right’ it would be difficult for an examiner to award it any marks because it did not do what the mark scheme dictated. It felt like crushing the abilities of a very bright student, whilst at the same time trying to encourage him to jump through hoops in order to get through the exam. ‘It will be different once you’ve got through GCSE.’

I do not remember what grade that he got in the end, I suspect he did end up with an A and I do know that the whole of that class, bar one student, got a C or above. It was before the days of numbered grades and even before the advent of the A* it was so long ago! Based on the one, rather brief encounter with this teenager, now a lecturer at a university and active in his union branch, I’m so proud of what he has become. I can’t claim to take any credit for that at all, but as we stand in the same union, in the same dispute, on the same (virtual) picket, I am reminded that education has the power to transform all those who are involved in it. That early encounter with a bright student who was in danger of failing because of the way the system was constructed was transformative for me.

I did not last long in secondary education. Even in 2000, when I abandoned full-time teaching, the workload and constraints on creativity were stifling. Yet my whole ‘career’, such as it is, has been in education of one sort or another. Post-school teaching I was in museum education and for the past nearly ten years, in universities. All of these jobs have had a profound effect on me as a person, on my views and outlook, but it is through union membership and activism that these views and outlook have been cemented into my work. Imagine a university where metrics do not matter, where good work is properly funded regardless of how lucrative it is, where there is no REF, no imperative to chase grants with miniscule chances of success, where creativity, exploration and experimentation are enough. The conversations I have with colleagues now are not wildly different to those I had with that teenager. ‘Here is the system, it’s a bit broken, this is what we need to do to get around that and make it work in the best way we can.’ I know that many similar conversations take place everyday, up and down the country.

We fight for a sector where these conversations are no longer necessary and the last three days have reminded me of that. I’m tired, but standing both in person and virtually with colleagues on pickets, talking to them, and my encounter with the past remind me that education is always worth fighting for. I return to work energised by it, more determined to make a difference, in the same way that I was determined to make a difference in schools. I am more determined to fight on, with more strike action if necessary, for the higher education sector that we all want, need and deserve. I am reminded that the transformation of people is the goal of education. We all need a reminder of the light sometimes, and striking is how that light gets in.

Breaking the link between Language and Culture

One Monday morning in February, twelve members of staff in the School of Languages and Cultures received an email from the Head of School telling them that they were to be transferred to the Modern Language Teaching Centre. Colleagues who had taught the rich mixture of languages and cultures associated with Catalan, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish – some for decades – learned that from September they would only be permitted to teach language courses.

The next day the rest of the staff in the School were informed, and it emerged that all staff had effectively been classified as somehow either specialists in ‘languages’ or in ‘cultures’, with no recognition of the fundamentally intertwined nature of language and culture that constitutes the heart of this type of degree all over the world. Decades of experience of researching and teaching language and cultures together were to be set aside, as university management sought its own ‘synergies’.

Staff in the Modern Languages Teaching Centre received a similar announcement, and joined with their SLC colleagues in pointing out that the proposed changes showed a total lack of understanding of the different expectations and modes of learning that characterise a cohort of linguists doing a languages degree and those who choose MLTC modules as an elective or a personal development activity. A very broad-brush example: a student taking a dual degree in German and History needs different language skills to be able to read, contextualise and analyse complex texts in German as compared to a Chemistry student taking a German language course in order to be able to work with a German company.

It’s a ‘broad-brush’ sketch, but it underpins the way languages are taught here at Sheffield and across Europe – and this has been wilfully disregarded in this reorganisation. Our colleagues in both departments have been dismayed to see attempts by university management to sow division by suggesting that staff in one department see their own methodologies and pedagogies as somehow ‘better’ than those in the other department. They’re not. They’re just different; and designed to cater to different cohorts of students.

An example is translation: in the MLTC translation is used to develop communicative skills, while in the SLC translation is treated as a specialist skill in itself, and a practical and theoretical base for postgraduate study and careers. Development of translation as a specialist focus has been encouraged by Faculty for several years now, as it fits with the University’s employability agenda, and feeds into the SLC’s Masters programmes in translation. For staff, the restructuring will have the bizarre and costly effect of stopping some highly experienced colleagues teaching translation, and asking others to hurriedly train up in a discipline that does not fit with their longstanding methodological expertise. For students, many of whom take two or even three languages, there is a clear threat of despecialisation.

Students have been demanding clear and detailed information on what all this means for their degree, and have consistently been told that ‘learning outcomes’ will not change. This is true in one sense – after intense lobbying by students and staff last semester, students have been promised that they will be offered instruction covering materials that correspond to the same CEFR levels as presently. But the CEFR scale, devised by the Council of Europe, only measures the “operational appropriation” of a language. Students will perhaps “operationally appropriate” a degree, but whether this will have the same standing and value as the languages and cultures degrees offered by other Russell Group universities has been thrown into doubt by this staggeringly ill-informed restructuring.

As mandated by our members at our recent EGM, we have now entered into formal dispute with the University. Please see the declaration of dispute letter submitted to the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Koen Lamberts. The trade dispute is over:

The decision to close the Archaeology department;

The decision to restructure the School of Languages and Cultures, the School of East Asian studies, and the 12 dual and single honours partners impacted by this decision;

The breach of the implied term of trust and confidence by the University in its failure to provide fair governance procedures for its decision making leading to (i) and (ii).

As we have discussed as a branch, points 1 and 2 fundamentally arise from the problems described in point 3. In this respect, the first step we have asked for is a fair and transparent independent barrister-led external review of the governance procedures that have led to these decisions. With full access to records, communications, and staff and student interviews, this should reveal where and how our governance processes are currently broken, and the steps which can be taken to fix them. During this review, we have asked for all actions related to the closure of the Archaeology department, and the continuation of the Future of Languages project, to be entirely halted.

We now await a response from the University. This is a simple, constructive and reasonable request that should help rebuild trust, getting management nearer to the “one University” goal. If they reject this request, we will proceed to a ballot for industrial action.

It is of special note our three other campus unions: Unison, UNITE and GMB were joint authors of the failure to agree letter and are also all exploring the next steps to escalate this dispute through indicative ballots etc within their own union framework. All staffside trade unions recognise the growing threat of the growing number of top-down flawed ‘change management processes’ which increasingly seem to run directly counter to the input and needs of staff and students in this community.

To join the Sheffield UCU dispute committee, please email us at ucu@sheffield.ac.uk.