To Be Taught To Teach

Photo Courtesy: UCL

There’s nothing new in calling the cost of education a contentious debate. From the arguments for and against private education at the lower levels, to the given cost of any pursuit of higher education, there’s a lot to talk about. But, no matter which side of the debate you land on, it’s not controversial to say that if you are paying someone for a service, you expect that service to be fulfilled.

It’s also not news to tell you that PGTAs are often overworked and underpaid. I spoke to a first year Postgraduate Teaching Assistant (PGTA) at UCL, who asked to remain anonymous. For the purposes of this article, I’ll call her Jane. Jane has had a distinct lack of communication about her role. Having never worked as a PGTA before, she has been given no guidance as to how she should distribute her time, or what tangible gains she will receive having completed her contract.

When children are sent to school (state funded or not), we can expect that their teachers will have completed a certain amount of training and testing to ensure that they are capable and suited to the role of teaching. Parents are confident that their children will receive a certain level of education. At university, however, we may have no such confidence in the teaching abilities of those we expect to learn from.

Attending UCL, one of the highest ranked universities world-wide, we can expect a certain amount of pedigree from our lecturers. They are often leaders in their fields, with nuanced knowledge rooted in years of research. Yet, this does not necessarily translate into an inherent ability to teach well. Many lecturers and TAs seem clueless as to how to articulate their knowledge and expertise to their students. We know that higher education is intended to be a much more independent learning process than secondary education. However, it cannot be expected that there is an immediate flick of a switch from completely supported and teacher-led learning. External guidance is required in order to acquire those self-sufficient skills.

It’s often taken as a given that PGTAs will put up with sub-par pay in return for teaching experience to further their careers within academia. Jane told me “if you want to get rich, don’t be a PGTA in the first place.” Even ignoring the poor payment, are PGTAs getting what they should be out of their contracts? It has been over two months since Jane’s employment offer, and she is yet to even receive a final contract. Seven drafts have been sent to her and then rescinded. She feels like there’s no point in reading them anyway: “whatever they say, there’s no power I have to negotiate.”

Surely, PGTAs must at least be getting valuable training and experience in teaching. While Jane has had several classes given to her this term, she has received no guidance—centrally or from her department—on how to teach them. There is no suggestion on how to divide your time between preparation, marking, teaching, and other contact hours. This is in contrast to the advertised promises of what to expect in a PGTA role at UCL.

The UCL Human Resources Postgraduate Teaching Code of Practice states:

“Departments should promptly inform PGTAs the hours they will be required to work.  Departments are encouraged to complete and share the PGTA Proforma, which identifies how the hours should be split.”

‘Practice makes perfect’ is a tired cliche. It should be ‘practice makes permanent.’ You can do something a thousand times, but if you’re going about it the wrong way—as you may well be expected to do with no formal guidance—you’ll just become set in your ways, rather than improve.

Paying £9250 a year—at least—for tuition, students want to know that they will receive a certain standard of education. Expecting those looking to go into academia to teach at the university level to have completed a role as a PGTA is a step in the right direction to ensure that those who teach us will know how to do so. However, if PGTA roles do not actually encompass any guidance or instruction on how to teach, then we just have the blind leading the blind.

The problems of pay and treatment teaching staff are facing affect students, too. In January, the UCL student body voted in a referendum for the SU to support the UCU strikes. If our teachers have better working conditions, then we have better learning conditions. This has to be seen to go beyond support for lecturers and to help our TAs as well. All universities need to pay serious attention to their approach to hiring and employing PGTAs. They have responsibilities as providers of education, and as employers to their employees. For many undergraduate students, PGTAs are the backbone of the support they feel they receive throughout their degree, often providing clearer guidance and a more accessible pathway to learning than lecturers. But, without proper training and guidance themselves, there’s only so much they can do.