From Professor Richard Reece | DVC Education and Student Experience

Thank you for your patience throughout both last week’s campus closure due to Storm Eunice and the recent strike days at Kent. This is due to continue with a further three days of strike action planned next week. While we do not always know in advance what the impact of this will be, wherever possible we will let you know about class cancellations that might affect you.  

Marking and Assessment Boycott  

Alongside this, our local UCU branch has also announced its intention to begin an additional period of industrial action alongside the strike days, with a marking and assessment boycott beginning on Thursday 3 March. If this does take place, it would mean that some UCU members at Kent may not share the results of any assessments that are scheduled during the boycott.  

We greatly regret this, and are doing all we can to come to an agreement with the local UCU to avoid this additional action taking place.  

What this means for you  

It is one of our guiding principles that no student will be disadvantaged by industrial action. Although it is difficult at the moment to predict the effects that this local action might have, we will put in place mitigation where we can to allow your studies to continue as smoothly as possible.   

We will also provide a further update and detailed Q+A ahead of the local action starting, with more on the background to the dispute and what we are doing about it. This will include detail on the support available to you, with more information on the student industrial action webpages.  

Kent Union is also running a series of student consultations about this action to make sure they can represent students’ views throughout – these start on Monday 28 February, with more information about them on the Kent Union website.   

With all good wishes,  

Richard    

Professor Richard Reece | DVC Education and Student Experience