Victory on university’s unfair attendance policy

From the Socialist Students website:

Victory! UEL Socialist Students – Unfair Attendance Policy: Scrapped!

by UEL Socialist Students

Following a year of opposition organised by the Socialist Students’ initiated ‘Scrap the Unfair Attendance Policy’ campaign (SUAP), the attendance policy at the University of East London (UEL) has been scrapped.

In the last academic year, students at UEL have been subject to automatic module de-registration if they were more than 10 minutes late (later extended to 15 minutes) on more than two occasions.

Under intense pressure built up by the campaign, UEL management have completely conceded, agreeing to scrap the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule, abolish the 15 minute cut-off time, and put an end to automatic withdrawals.

From now on, students whose attendance drops below 75% will be subject to an investigation, but the final decision will be with the student’s school and academic staff.

In spite of this victory, UEL university management continue to ratchet up the workload of UEL lecturers, the most overworked in the country.

Socialist Students has supported UEL lecturers organised in the UCU trade union taking strike action to reduce workload so lecturers will have more time to prepare our lessons, mark our work, and speak to us when we need help.