Further education managers’ and lecturers’ perspectives and experiences of casual, insecure employment contracts in England: A narrative study

In the most recent data from the UK Government 21% of further education lecturers in England are employed on casual, insecure contracts. This thesis examines the perceptions and experiences of the effects of employment casualisation voiced by further education academic managers and casual lecturers. In a sector of education that is often overlooked the rise of casualisation can cause challenges for both managers and lecturers.

Since the 1990s further education in England has seen sweeping changes following the implementation of the policies of neoliberalism leading to the rise of New Public Management. The introduction of competition and the internal market made funding reliant upon student recruitment, retention and achievement. To cut costs and increase internal profits standardised pay agreements were removed and local pay arrangements implemented, resulting in increased casualisation, and lower salaries and benefits for lecturers. Lecturer recruitment became difficult; lecturer attrition has risen. With the UK Government seeking to boost the economy by increasing the skills of the population, it is imperative further education maintains a stable, committed workforce to deliver and train the employees of the future. In this under-researched field, the potential links between casualisation and workforce dissatisfaction are highlighted.

This autoethnographical, narrative study drew on my personal story of being a casual lecturer, and the experiences of five managers and four other casual lecturers from across the further education landscape in England. Semi-structured interviews, including a personal participatory interview, were conducted, and the concept of using idioms to thematically analyse their narratives was developed. The findings were theoretically framed in a tripartite combination of Foucauldian philosophies, Mechanic’s, and Salancik and Pfeffer’s organisation dependency theories, and Standing’s precariat.

The lecturers expressed challenges with casualisation: financial and job insecurities, feelings of second classness, and resentment of their casual status creating mental health and well-being issues. Power relationships with the managers proved unstable, the lecturers fearful, denuded of their ability to speak out unless financially stable. The managers discussed the challenges they faced, demonstrating an unexpected conflict when managing the casual lecturers due to their own personal experiences of casualisation. This conflict created difficulties for the managers causing additional workload and stress, for themselves and their permanent lecturers. Decasualisation of the lecturing workforce was recommended by both managers and lecturers, and the research investigated the rationale for, and consequences of, a decasualisation policy which had already been implemented within one further education college prior to the research.