Employment arrangements for PGTAs in SELCS
The employment arrangements below apply to all SELCS PGTAs (Postgraduate
Teaching Assistants) for work that they undertake in SELCS. It aims to encourage:
 transparency, fairness and consistency in terms of employment (e.g. pay
calculations, clarity of roles)
 simpler appointment procedures for PGTAs; and
 compliance with UCL procedures and employment law.
The role of PGTAs
A PGTA, as the title suggest, should be a current postgraduate who undertakes
some supervised teaching and, possibly, supervised marking during their research
degree. PGTAs should not have and should not be asked to have the same teaching
responsibilities or pastoral duties as teaching fellows or academic staff. The teaching
that they undertake should be ‘developmental’, that is, undertaken as part of their
professional development. They may be asked to supplement teaching that has
been organized and planned by a TF or academic member of staff but should not be
asked, for instance, to devise new courses or revise existing courses significantly.
Information about UCL policy on PGTAs is posted at:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/docs/post_grad_ta_scheme.php
Work load
Preparation and contact hours
For every hour that a PGTA teaches, the School will pay them one hour for teaching
the class or seminar plus one hour for preparation. The hour for preparation includes
marking non-assessed work (e.g. weekly translation exercises).
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Additional duties
In addition to teaching and preparation, there are four types of additional PGTA
tasks: 1) tasks that all PGTAs are expected to undertake; 2) tasks that some PGTAs
may need to undertake; and 3) tasks that some PGTAs may be asked to undertake.
1. All PGTAs are expected to undertake the following duties:
a) Office hours. 10 minutes per weekly contact hour. E.g. a PGTA teaching 2
contact hours a week would be paid for 1/3 of hour a week for holding office
hours.
b) Attendance of mandatory meetings, in proportion to the amount of teaching that
they do; e.g. each year PGTAs are expected to attend 3 hours of meetings.
c) Training. One course a year. For each course that they attend, PGTAs will be
paid for 3 hours irrespective of the number of hours of the training course.
It would be unnecessarily complicated to work out the pay due to each PGTA
for these duties. The School will instead add 7 hours onto each PGTA’s
teaching hours.
2. New PGTAs need to complete appropriate training courses. In keeping with UCL
policy, the School will pay PGTAs to complete courses of this kind by the hour up
to a maximum of 9 hours in each year.
3. Tasks that some PGTAs may be asked to undertake with permission of the
School Director:
a) Oral examinations. Paid by the hour.
b) Second-marking of assessed work or, exceptionally first-marking under the
supervision of an experienced teaching fellow or member of academic staff.
The rates of pay for marking assessed work are given below.
c) Recruitment events, e.g. widening participation, open days, summer courses,
etc. Paid by the hour.
d) Collecting examinations scripts.
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e) Other tasks that may arise
Marking of assessed work
PGTAs who are asked to mark assessed work will be remunerated according to the
following schedule:
Assessed essays, dissertations, take-home papers, etc
First marking, 1 minute per 100 words, e.g.:
1500 word essay = 15 minutes
2000 word essay = 20 minutes
3000 word essay = 30 minutes
Second marking or moderating, 1 minute per 200 words.
Timed exam scripts
First marking, 15 minutes per hour of the exam per script, e.g.:
2 hour paper = 30 minutes
3 hour paper = 45 minutes
Second marking or moderating, 7.5 minutes per hour of the exam per script, e.g.:
2 hour paper = 15 minutes
3 hour paper = 22.5 minutes
Pay
PGTAs will be paid in monthly instalments over period of employment for their
contact hours, preparation and the additional required tasks (7 hours) itemized
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above (see ‘Additional duties’, section 1 above). Payment for marking will be
included in their contracted hours. If marking is not included in their contracted
hours, they will be given a one-off payment for marking of assessed work. Similarly,
they be given a one-off payment for attendance of training course and other tasks
not required of all PGTAs (see ‘Additional duties’, sections 2-3 above).
Holiday pay
Holiday pay will be paid via a one-off payment
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