Postgraduates Who Teach

Postgraduates who Teach (PGWT)

We are committed to providing opportunities to acquire transferable skills that will enhance your preparation for a variety of careers. For some of you, experience of teaching is one of those valuable skills. 

We are also committed to giving all our students the best possible educational experience and outcomes, and we recognise the important contribution that postgraduates who teach play in providing that experience and as members of the university community. 

The purpose of this policy is to support the University’s ongoing efforts to move away from ‘casualised’ employment. It is worth noting that increasing the amount of planned contracted activity will depend upon longer-term commitment from postgraduate teachers as well as from the University. The spirit of this policy is that paid teaching opportunities are based on the University’s needs and that appointment of postgraduate teachers to meet these needs may be competitive; the policy does not provide an ‘entitlement’ for individual postgraduate students to be provided with teaching experience or with a particular contract. 

The revised PGWT policy came into effect from the start of the 2023/24 academic year.  

In response to feedback from Colleagues and PGR Students we have developed an Addendum to Postgraduates Who Teach Policy (35.6 kB) for Postgraduate Teaching Assistants (PGTA).  

This guidance should be read in conjunction with the full Revised PGWT Policy v3 27082024.pdf (0.3 MB) (August 2024) and is intended to provide guidance to research students who are PGTAs and colleagues in Academic Units who have PGTAs.  

In addition, we have updated our set of PGWT Policy FAQs (27082024).pdf (0.2 MB) to include more detailed guidance on categories of PGWT, and employment related questions. The FAQs will continue to evolve over time, based on feedback received from students and colleagues, updates will be posted regularly on our webpages. 

Additional documents you may find helpful are the Conditions of Service for Contracted Postgraduate Teachers (CPT) which includes the Principles of Contracted Postgraduate Teacher and the Conditions of Service for Postgraduate Teaching Assistants (PTA).

The Doctoral College and People Services are working closely with Academic Units, and PGR Research Students throughout the implementation of the PGWT Policy to improve processes and procedures and incorporate improvements to guidance. 

 

Contact info

For any general queries please contact doctoralcollege@newcastle.ac.uk

For questions relating to Principles for Contracted Postgraduate Teachers please contact Natalie.Hugall@newcastle.ac.uk