Each year we offer some advice to members as we head into the Academic Appraisals – now called Professional Development Review (PDR).

This year, PDRs are being used against a background of significant staff cuts under Phases 1 and 2 of the Financial Resilience Programme, with confidence in our senior managers at an all-time low, and no assurances that we are not heading to “Phase 3”, with more cuts. Note, we have not received an answer to our request to know which areas of the University still have financial savings to make, or how such savings will be made. 

Please see below some detailed advice for this year, updated to account for the significant changes to the process.

Excerpt from page 2 of Academic Professional Review Guidance:

“Who is going to be my Reviewer? Your Reviewer is the person completing your PDR. Most academic staff are members of a School; however, we have wide variants of academic areas (Departments, Centres, Institutes) which are best described by the generic category of Academic Operational Units (AOUs). The Head of your AOU will decide whether they undertake your PDR or, more likely, which senior colleague will be appointed to undertake the review. The term that we use for an appraiser who is not the AOU Head is ‘Reviewer’ (hence the use of the Head/Reviewer shorthand elsewhere in this document). The process of delegation will vary according to the scale of the AOU. Updated 08/07/24 Page 3 Please note that if your Reviewer is not your line-managing Head, then the Head will also need to sign the completed form so that they are across what has been written by both by the staff member and the Reviewer.”

UCU comments:

You may wish to seek clarification of the process in your own area, because we are aware of variations in practice across the University. In some cases, immediate line managers at Department-level will conduct PDR meetings with staff using prior ratings that will already have been decided in advance by the Head of School. This is a significant departure from previous practice, and we don’t know if there is a “rank-and-yank” approach being taken in some areas, because unions were not consulted about this change.

Excerpt from page 4 of Academic Professional Review Guidance:

“I’m on a Research pathway, why does the PDR form include Teaching? If your contract is deemed to be ‘research’, it is likely that you will undertake some Teaching and/or more broadly to contribute to the educational aims of your School/Department; in which case, this is an opportunity to have this rated by your Reviewer as well as encouraging you to set goals in the ‘Education and Student Experience’ domain for the following year. However, if you are engaged as a researcher and the funding rules prohibit you from contributing to Teaching, then you would not be evaluated in this area.

Similarly, staff on teaching contracts will normally engage in Scholarship/Research activities and these should be evaluated in the PDR and appropriate goals will also be set in the ‘Research, Innovation, and Impact’ domain.”

UCU comments: 

You should not be forced or coerced to accept ratings or targets for activities that are not part of your contract. “Optimising Academic Achievement” (OAA; under which the PDR process sits) does not override the terms of your contract of employment.

We have made our concerns known to the Executive Board around staff on single-track contracts being assessed against all three domains, despite which the rationale for this change has not been shared openly with us. The background here is that the Executive Board have cut and frozen hundreds of posts to cover their lack of foresight regarding sector-wide funding issues, while simultaneously rolling out expensive projects which include new courses. There is an obvious high risk of failure of these projects with so few staff left to run them and this may be the likely rationale for attempting to load more teaching onto remaining staff.

If you are on a single-track contract, you should not be penalised for refusing to accept targets outside of your formal remit. If you do decide to agree to anything extra we advise that you seek written assurances of the exact workload involved, together with time and resources available to support you. Be sure that you understand how you will be assessed next year, and keep a written log of whether the support promised was actually delivered. If you are volunteering for this extra work then our view is that it should not be accompanied by a target against which your voluntary activities could be measured in a year’s time. 

What ever type of contract you are on, be aware of attempts to coerce you in to agreeing to take on additional duties that may overload you or detract too much from priorities in your own teaching and / or research. Keep in mind that certain members of the Executive Board may have career aspirations that are important to them, but they rank no more importantly than your career aspirations do to you.  If you feel that you are being coerced into an agreement to work beyond the terms of your contract, then you may want to seek further advice from UCU before committing yourself.

Please feed back to us your experiences so that we can advise you further, and update our general guidance to all members.

Are you on an teaching & research contract, and being down-graded for not excelling in all three “Domains”?

We note that for a teaching / research academic to be promoted (according to the new promotion process) there is a requirement to excel in at least two of the three domains. You should therefore robustly defend yourself against any attempt to rate you less than “Meeting Expectations” if you have performed well in at least two domains, because that would imply an illogical scenario whereby the standard for promotion is less rigorous than for performing well at your current level.

Excerpt from page 4 of Academic Professional Review Guidance:

“How am I going to be rated in the PDR?

Heads/Reviewers will identify evaluations for activities that have been undertaken in each of categories.

The Ratings are:

1. Exceeds expectations and objectives

2. Successful in meeting expectations and objectives

3. Partially meets expectations and objectives

4. Unsatisfactory. Not meeting expectations and objectives.

What happens if I do not get the rating I am hoping for? Academics at Surrey are high achievers and will likely aspire to be rated exceptional in all respects. It is important to note that performance among a large cohort of staff is always going to be distributed; it may be more important for your career to have an open conversation about where you may be able to improve. The test of a mature institution is whether we are able to have courageous conversations about what has gone well (and be recognised for that) and where improvements can be made (and be supported for that).

UCU comments: We have expressed concern to senior management that the five categories in the previous appraisal system (two for above expectations; one neutral, and two for below expectations) are replaced by new ratings in which one of the positive categories has been removed. Our concerns are that this risks a skew to the more negative ratings across a normal distribution of scores. Certain interpretations of the PDR guidance wording above suggests that we were correct to be concerned.

Without the transparency we would expect from a management that supposedly recognises a Trade Union Agreement, we see the potential here for punitive actions – for example, it may be harder to get promoted if you have not scored a “1”, and it may be risky to your job security to score a “3” or “4”.

If you have performed well, and find your manager wishes to score you below “2”, we advise to push back against this. At the very least, you should make sure you hold management to their apparent commitment of “support” in the PDR guidance documentation. Make sure there your managers commit to a tangible and realistic resource allowance and ask for mentorship, time, and appropriate achievable targets next year. Keep a clear log of whether management honoured these commitments, should any failings of their part help you fight against allegations of underperformance next year.

We note the irony around the opinion that a test of maturity involves courageous conversations being made in the face of a low rating, expressed by the same people who have remained silent in the face of an overwhelming vote-of-no-confidence of 97% of staff and students at the University.

Excerpt from page 7 of Academic Professional Review Guidance:

“Colleagues are reminded that Learning and Teaching Objectives are as follows:

Achieving MEQ scores of 85% in overall satisfaction

75% in assessment and feedback

80% in organisation and management in modules being taught.”

UCU Comments: We remain in dispute with the University management about the use of fixed MEQ targets and thresholds in appraisals, because we had a prior negotiated agreement in place about this, which management reneged on. The agreement previously entered into between UCU and the VC is clear:  MEQs are only an example of a performance target and there are no fixed percentages against which you can be measured. The current management have chosen to break that agreement hence the continuing dispute. When UCU enters into an agreement it stands by it. When management reneges on their agreements then it is another example of their lack of good faith and poor leadership.

The better-managed part of the HE sector is moving away from the use of student ratings as crude measures of staff performance, as these articles illustrate:

Universities drop student teaching evaluations | Times Higher Education (THE)).

Module Evaluation Questionnaires – Education – University of St Andrews (st-andrews.ac.uk) -leading to  how-to-interpret-and-use-meq-feedback.pdf (st-andrews.ac.uk)

Closing the loop – evaluating the use of student feedback to enhance teaching | University of Hull

In addition to the numerous shortcomings in the reliability of student ratings, including biases around protected characteristics that MEQs have been shown to amplify, we note the low return rate makes these scores very unreliable. We attach an “MEQ margin of error calculator” that you may find useful, which measures the 95% confidence interval of these scores. (For the unfamiliar, this is a statistical tool which estimates the range within which your true score may lie when sampling error is accounted for because only a portion of samples are collected from a given population. Further details on how to interpret your score is given in the Excel attachment).

Our advice is to offer your manager alternatives to appraising your educational activities. You can illustrate your commitment to teaching by setting yourself targets and aims that are fully within your control: E.g. updating teaching material; implementing a novel idea or building on something you trialled in the last year that went well, are examples of SMART targets.

UCU invites members to get in touch if you have any concerns about your PDR, and/ or if you need advice about any of the following:

1. you do not want to sign your PDR due to a misalignment/disagreement in either ratings or content, and you are not provided with a mechanism to register this disagreement

2. You are a line manager and have concerns about the pressure this altered process places upon you. Please also report any targets that you are set regarding giving people low ratings.

3. You have any other concern/s related to the PDR process

Remember:

• Do not sign your PDR if you are not happy with what your review and your rating says. You can add a line stating any reasons why you do not think it is appropriate for you to sign.
• Do not commit to targets that are not SMART
• If you are identified as needing to improve in any area, ensure that the support, time, and resource you will receive from your managers is clearly documented

All feedback will be handled in strict confidence, and anonymised and collated before being forward to the Surrey UCU Committee.