Staff at England’s biggest exam board are planning further strikes on GCSE results day this year, their union said this morning.
The announcement follows last week’s news that 180 AQA workers - including those in customer services who would normally take calls from schools, parents and students about the results, according to Unison - will walk out between Wednesday 17 and Sunday 21 August. This period includes A-level results day on Thursday 18 August.
And now 180 workers - again including staff in customer services who would normally take calls from schools, parents and students on results day, according to the union - will take action the following week from Wednesday 24 to Sunday 28 August. GCSE results day is Thursday 25 August.
Unison said the latest strikes could cause issues for schools, which are set to receive GSCE results on Wednesday 24 August, as well as students, who find out their grades the following day.
It added that AQA customer services, re-marking enquiries and investigations into missing results will be affected by the strikes.
Exam board staff to strike on GCSE results day
However, the exam board has refuted Unison’s claims that its customer services will be affected, claiming that previous action in July “had no noticeable impact on our customer service team”. It added that students and parents will not be affected, as they should speak to their school or college about any issues.
Staff have been left with no option but to take industrial action after senior managers at the exam board refused to improve a pay offer of 3 per cent and threatened staff with being fired and rehired on inferior contracts, the union said.
Unison also said that wages at AQA increased last year by just 0.6 per cent and this year’s offer is less than a third of the current lowest measure of inflation.
However, AQA previously said that the offer for workers included a pro-rata payment of £500, alongside additional incremental increases for some staff, meaning the average pay increase would be 5.6 per cent.
The union said AQA must drop its refusal to speak to staff on the matter to end the dispute.
But AQA said it already ”consulted with all staff for over two months, followed by seven months of a dispute resolution process with unions”.
Unison North West regional manager Vicky Knight said that staff were given ”a meagre wage rise” last year.
“AQA employees are struggling to make ends meet and simply cannot afford to accept the miserly pay award on offer,” she said.
“On top of this, AQA is threatening dismissal and re-engagement if staff don’t accept. Threatening the dreadful practice of fire and rehire is no way to make progress in a dispute. AQA managers must come back to the table and discuss a fair resolution.”
An AQA spokesperson said: “These are the same, scaremongering claims that Unison keeps making, and that we’ve already proved wrong: we’ve set all our grade boundaries, and yesterday we sent A-level and AS results to Ucas, as we do every year. So everything is on track, and we wish all our students well for the results they’ll receive on 18 and 25 August.”
“Unison’s actions deliberately targeting students like this are pointless and completely ineffectual. It won’t stop us from delivering the exam results our learners so richly deserve or supporting everyone afterwards.
“We have robust contingency plans in place to ensure that industrial action has no effect on results, and our records show that only 4 per cent of our total workforce took part in that [previous] industrial action - the remaining 96 per cent are absolutely committed to never letting our learners down.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We have been reassured the strike action announced by Unison among AQA staff will not have any impact on exam results.
“Only a tiny proportion of AQA’s staff are affected and it’s deeply disappointing that Unison choose to needlessly alarm students and parents with scaremongering about the impact on results.”
