The Friday email: 29 August 2025

New academic year: please check your details

With the new academic year beginning soon, please take a moment of your time to check your details on MyUCU. If you have moved house or changed jobs over the summer, please update us via MyUCU so that we can continue to send you important and accurate information and provide support.

Save Adult Education: sign our petition, email your MP

Adult education plays an absolutely vital role in fostering community cohesion and pushing back against hatred and division. Read this article on how this is playing out at one provider. The critical importance of this work makes it all the more inexcusable that the UK government has pushed through cuts to the Adult Skills Fund, directly undermining the work educators are doing to combat the far-right in our communities.

In our campaign to Save Adult Education, we are calling for these cuts to be reversed and for proper investment in adult skills and education. We are also demanding that adult education plays a central role in a national skills strategy--ensuring staff in the sector are treated as professionals, with secure contracts and terms and conditions equal to other educators.

To support the campaign, you can sign our petition and write to your MP, asking them to help Save Adult Education.

Higher education consultative ballot: results

UCU's consultative electronic ballot on the higher education (HE) pay and working conditions offer for 2025/26 closed on Friday 15 August 2025.

You can click here for the results of the consultation, which have also been sent to UCU members in relevant HE branches by email on Tuesday 19 August.

The elected representatives on UCU's higher education committee (HEC) are meeting on Monday 1 September to consider the results and decide on next steps.

Stop the Cuts! Disputes at UK universities

University of Sheffield: an industrial action ballot opened this week, in a dispute over management's plans to put staff in five academic areas at risk of redundancy, as well as continued risk of redundancy to professional services staff across the university. The university announced reviews of staffing in chemistry, civil engineering, management, materials science, and East Asian studies.

University of Leicester UCU members have been voting in a statutory ballot for strike action. The dispute is over the university's refusal to rule out compulsory redundancies in the upcoming academic year. Staff in a number of departments (chemistry, history, geography, film studies and modern languages) have been informed they may face redundancy. Hundreds of professional services staff across five key operational areas have also been placed in 'pre-change' processes, indicating they may also be at risk.

Industrial action ballots in disputes over job cuts and redundancies are also opening at Sheffield Hallam University, University of the West of Scotland, University of Dundee, and Lancaster University. We will provide updates soon.

Please also support many other university branches, such as Liverpool Hope, Bradford, Nottingham, Oxford Brookes, where UCU members are also defending jobs and education.

UCU elections: casual vacancies on NEC

UCU is currently conducting a ballot for the election of two casual vacancies on the union's national executive committee (NEC): HE North East, and HE UK-elected.

Postal ballot materials have been dispatched by Civica Election Services on Monday 18 August. The ballot closes on Thursday 18 September. The union encourages all ballot eligible members to vote. If you cannot locate your postal ballot pack, you can request a replacement via this form; the replacement request form will close on Thursday 11 September.

Further information on this election, including rules and election addresses can be found on the casual vacancies election page of the UCU website.

UCU webinar on HE governance, 17 September

UCU is holding a webinar on Zoom entitled 'HE governance in a time of crisis' on Wednesday 17 September (13:00-14:15). You can register here.

The current funding and jobs crisis in UK higher education is also a failure of HE governance. Come and hear from academic experts and union activists about the nature of the governance problems in higher education and discuss union responses, including internationally. Speakers include: Professor Steve Jones (University of Manchester); Dr Sophia Woodman (University of Edinburgh); Dr Sinéad Kennedy (Maynooth University).

International conference on academic freedom, 15 October

UCU, with the support of Education International (EI), is hosting an international conference on academic freedom on Wednesday 15 October. The conference will hear from international trade unions and experts about global and national challenges to academic freedom and will discuss how to build effective union responses, including in the UK. The confirmed keynote speaker is Robert Quinn, executive director of the Scholars at Risk Network.

The conference will be run as a hybrid event. UCU members can either attend online or in person at the Hamilton House Meeting Rooms, Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9BD. We expect spaces for the in-person event to fill up quickly so register as soon as possible to secure your place; the conference is free to attend.

UCU equality group conferences 2025

This year each of UCU's equality groups will have a one-day hybrid conference. The venue will be UCU head office, and the online platform will be Zoom. Those joining remotely will be able to participate fully in the conference, including voting on motions and attending workshops. When registering for the event delegates must select if they wish to attend the conference/s in-person or remotely.

The days of the conferences are outlined below (all from 11:00-16:00):

• Friday 14 November: women members' annual conference
• Saturday 15 November: LGBT+ members' annual conference
• Thursday 20 November: disabled members' annual conference
• Friday 21 November: Black members' annual conference
• Friday 5 December: migrant members' conference

This year the equality groups conference will have a broad theme of 'Organising against division: building inclusive workplaces, resisting reactionary politics'. To register please use this link, which will take you to the main equality groups conference page.

Updates on USS pensions

The Superannuation Working Group (SWG) recently organised a webinar to update UCU members on its work with USS pensions and Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) on conditional indexation. You can watch a recording of that webinar here.

Revaluation is the process by which USS increases a member's pension each year. USS have recently changed their Rules on Revaluation to bring them in line with their operational practice. This could have a significant impact on scheme members. Information is now available on UCU website to assist members understand this complex issue and encourage them to seek independent financial advice.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Caucus survey

The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Caucus (EDICa), a major research initiative funded by UKRI and the British Academy, is conducting a survey focusing on the lived experiences of bullying and sexual harassment. Specifically, they are seeking responses from anyone employed in UK's research and innovation sector, including PhD students, since 2023.

They are especially keen to hear from individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds (particularly Black respondents) and those working in non-STEM disciplines. Click here to fill out the survey, which is open until 1 October 2025.