Educational and Student Policy

Information and support for staff

The Centre for Personal and Professional Development (CPPD) provides a range of support, from induction sessions and the Programme in Higher Education Practice (PHEP) to mid-career review. The activities described below are those that are most obviously tied to learning and teaching activities:

Mentoring/peer review of staff

All institutions should make arrangements for the mentoring of newly appointed staff. Any member of academic staff in a new post should be allocated a mentor, whose responsibilities include giving advice on how to find support for learning and teaching activities. This complements the formal employment information provided at induction.

In addition, some institutions combine the mentoring relationship with peer review of teaching (although the two processes can also be run quite independently).

Staff review and development

The University requires all institutions to have staff review and development (appraisal) procedures in place. A general structure for appraisal is provided by the Human Resources Division: faculties and departments may customise it within certain limits for their own use:

More information about staff review can be obtained from your institution's Human Resources Business Manager. CPPD's course programme includes relevant courses such as:

  • "Staff Review and Development for reviewers"
  • "Staff Review and Development for reviewees"

The Higher Education Academy aims to support the professional development and recognition of staff in higher education. It promotes good practice and provides advice, resources and subject-specific support through a network of 24 Subject Centres.

Faculty/department-specific guidance for academic staff and supervisors

Increasingly, faculties and departments provide all members of staff who contribute to learning and teaching with a handbook or other guidance bringing together the relevant lines of reporting and communication, general teaching and assessment guidance, policies and expectations, key contacts for advice and information and summaries of course aims and learning outcomes.

In addition, the Senior Tutors' Committee has issued guidance for supervisors of undergraduates. This guidance deals with issues such as confidentiality, completion and return of supervision report forms, what to do about missed sessions and other causes of concern, a general expectation of supervision teaching, and the implications of the Data Protection Act. Where faculties and departments are involved in organising supervisions themselves they may wish to supplement this information with local guidance.

The CPPD Programme includes sessions specially designed for graduate students who are undertaking teaching, including supervising and the General Board and Senior Tutors' Committee have issued the following guidance:

In addition, many institutions run their own in-house training sessions for supervisors and members of CPPD are able to assist with this.

The Board of Graduate Studies issues, through its Code of Practice for support of postgraduate research students, guidance on the Board's expectations of supervisors of Graduate students. Faculties and departments may issue supplementary local guidance. It may be appropriate to differentiate, for this purpose, between MPhil and PhD student supervisors. Those faculties and departments responsible for postgraduate courses which do not fall within the Board of Graduate Studies' remit should have appropriate guidance for supervisors on their courses.

Sources of further support