AQA strike: A tough decision but the right one

For James Rose and Kate Smith, taking industrial action at examination board AQA was not an easy decision. But it was, they both say, the right one. At the end of August, on strike again, they headed south from Manchester with four colleagues and three organisers. In London, with general secretary Christina McAnea, they took their message from UNISON Centre (pictured above) to the AQA headquarters in nearby Tavistock Square. It’s a simple one, summarised as a call to treat the workforce staff decently. James is a preparation coordinator, working on quality control and standardisation. The latter is a process where, after students have taken their exams, staff “ensure that there’s a consistent marking standard across different examiners and they understand how to apply the mark scheme and what’s worthy of credit and what’s not, to ensure that we have good marking quality”. Ultimately, it’s all “to ensure that students are getting fair outcomes”. That’s something James is passionate about. He’s worked in a variety of roles at AQA for seven years, having started off as a temporary member of the staff in Manchester before his first permanent post in customer relations, but he particularly enjoys his current job, where he’s “working more face to face with the examiners”. He describes how, particularly in the summer, the work is “to a very tight schedule” to make sure that grades are available on time, but stresses that this also needs to be done to ...
Source: UNISON Health care news - Category: UK Health Authors: Tags: Article News AQA Industrial action Source Type: news