Postgraduate Teaching Associates (PTAs) - Contracting Guidance for Managers and Students (Regular/Pre-Scheduled Work)
The University of Exeter's contracting arrangements for Postgraduate Teaching Associates offer many benefits including:
- Greater professionalisation of the Postgraduate Teaching Associate role, including clear association with the Education and Scholarship academic terms and conditions of employment;
- Enhancing students' future employment opportunities by including employment status on CV’s;
- A commitment by both parties - from the University to provide work and by the employee to undertake the work that has been agreed;
- Participation of postgraduate students in induction, probation, training and Performance Development Review procedures (via ePDR) for which payment will be made for participating in these activities;
- Membership of the university’s pension scheme arrangements “Universities Superannuation Scheme” and other benefits received by employees of the University, including sickness benefits;
- Ensuring that the terms and conditions and benefits are applied equitably with other employees on similar contracting arrangements.
Our postgraduate students who are employed as a Postgraduate Teaching Associate (PTA) will be offered a fixed term contract for the duration of the academic year. Students will be paid for work they have completed by recording and claiming their hours via iTrent, the University’s payroll and Employee Self-Service system. Please note that the PTA role title may differ in some subjects.
Students who undertake ad-hoc or one-off pieces of work will be engaged on a casual basis via the Claims Payroll. Casual workers are paid via the University Paid Time system: Casual workers' information | Temporary Workers | University of Exeter
PTAs will receive an Assignment Schedule with a description of their hours worked and hours training, and an employment contract with details of their terms and conditions, including pay and holiday. More information can be found here https://www.exeter.ac.uk/staff/employment/payandconditions/conditions/terms/.
Guidance and frequently asked questions for Postgraduate Teaching Associates can be found here for PTAs and here for Managers . Queries relating to hours of work should be referred to your academic manager.
If you have further queries that cannot be clarified through the above links, please refer to the following contacts:
For queries relating to your employment contract - please contact humanresources@exeter.ac.uk
For queries relating to your payments - please contact payandbenefits@exeter.ac.uk
From 1st September 2021 Postgraduate Teaching Assistants became Postgraduate Teaching Associates.