We have just sent details of the Goodwill Payment Scheme to students affected by Industrial Action during 2021-22. The email has been sent your Kent account. If you have any questions or haven’t received the email but think you’re eligible, please email industrialaction@kent.ac.uk 

How the Goodwill Payment Scheme was agreed 

The University decided that the most accurate way to find out which students were impacted by industrial action was to assume that, where a staff member had declared that they were on strike, that the teaching events due to take place on those days would have been impacted in some way. This could have taken the form of a missed class or missed content, for example. Adopting this principle, we determined that there were almost 8,000 students who experienced at least one affected teaching event. Of these, around 2,770 were impacted ten or more times with approximately 2,300 students impacted by just one missed teaching event. I am aware that many of these missed teaching events were also mitigated by, for example, make-up activities or through the availability of alternative resources.  

The savings made by the University across all strike days in 2021/22 through withheld salaries amounted to around £194,000. Whilst the amount of savings might seem significant, when divided between impacted students, it becomes thinly stretched and potentially would not acknowledge the level of disruption suffered by the more seriously affected students. Therefore, in order to provide an appropriate and meaningful goodwill payment to those affected most significantly, we reached the decision that students who were affected only once by an impacted teaching event, would not receive a goodwill payment.  This is regrettable, but please be assured that the decision was made after very careful modelling of a variety of banding options for payments in consultation with Kent Union. This consultation involved presenting different options and models to student representatives to understand what the most satisfactory decision would be to as many students as possible.  

The following goodwill gestures will be offered:  

Band A: Students impacted 11 times or more = £75  

Band B: Students impacted 6 – 10 times = £50  

Band C: Students impacted 2 – 5 times = £25  

Band D: Students who were impacted once and will be returning to study next academic year, will receive a drinks voucher to use on campus when they return.   

If you have any questions, please email industrialaction@kent.ac.uk