These guidelines are issued in order to achieve the following objectives:
- to achieve education provision of a high standard;
- to recognise the professional contribution which lecturers make to the HE sector;
- to avoid lecturers undertaking unreasonable workloads;
- to enable the distribution of work to be carried out locally and fairly within an institution taking into account the local circumstances.
The duties and responsibilities of a lecturer are inherently of a professional nature and wide ranging. They include direct teaching, tutorial guidance to students' learning, research and other forms of scholarly activity, curriculum development, educational management and administration, participation in the democratic processes of the institution (committee membership etc), participation in quality assurance procedures, recruitment and admission of students, staff appraisal, income generating activities, and representing the institution on or to appropriate external bodies.
The proportion of time an individual should devote to any of these activities is a matter for professional judgement, which is necessarily made on an individual basis, bearing in mind the needs of both the individual lecturer and the institution.
Both staff and management jointly have a responsibility to seek to enhance the quality of educational provision, but at the same time to increase access to higher education to all sectors of the population, since the extent to which this is achieved is also a measure of the quality of the service. To this end there is mutual concern to improve flexibility and to bring about changes in working practices and methods of delivery, supported by a commitment to the professional development of staff.
Workloads which damage performance and which are detrimental to the lecturer, students and the service must be avoided through good management practice in which academic managers (Deans of Faculties, Subject Lecturers, Course Tutors etc) and their colleagues collectively determine optimum working practices which safeguard standards for all aspects of a lecturer's role, and for individuals to manage their time in a fully professional way towards individual and corporate objectives.