Strong disagreement after calculation regarding workload social work
- According to director Ineke van der Wal, the is no comparison with the old study programme.
- Unit participation council chairperson Frank Joustra: ‘We are furious about this.’
A cunning, big cutback. That was the conclusion made by a number of teachers of division Health Care and Social Work, after they made the comparison between the amount of teacher load hours (DBUs),which were used in the past, and the attributions for the new study programme Social Work. All in all, it appears there is a burden increase of about 30 to 50 percent, according to them.
The teachers showed their results to the unit participation council and to division director Ineke van der Wal. She, however, isn’t convinced: ‘The writers of the letter made use of the DBU-systematic approach of 2012, for the programme course Social Work and Social Services. When you compare this to the numbers of the new degree course Social Work, you are comparing apples and oranges. Since then, things have definitely changed. The financial framework is different. Since September 2017 we should amount to a zero-estimate. Secondly, the programme course Social Work is obviously something entirely different than Social Services.
Unit participation council chairperson Frank Joustra dismisses her argument: ‘It isn’t ‘comparing oranges and apples’ at all. A lecture is a lecture, a seminar is a seminar. Revising is still revising. No matter what systematic approach you use, a lesson is a lesson. On average, there is approximately 30 percent less time. It also confirms what I see all around, which is that teachers that are involved with social work have not been able to find the necessary time in their schedules. The working pressure was high already.
According to Van der Wal the DBU-systematic approach in itself has changed too. In 2012, for example, meetings were counted as class time. Van der Wal: ‘I’ve worked hard to separate education hours from organisation hours. 480 hours of class per semester should really be hours ‘in front of the class’.’ She does admit that an organisation error has been made for the first years students schedule: ‘Lessons were initially planned to be 50 minutes, instead of 60, which it should have been. That is of course unfair, and as soon as I was informed about this, I frankly admitted to it. It is a lot of niggling but at this moment we are working hard to compensate the individual.’ According to Joustra, the state of affairs is typical for the way the management team deals with the unit participation council: ‘We have been telling Ineke for years that she should involve us more in decision making. But what has happened now, goes beyond all boundaries. As a big decrease of DBUs has taken place without the participation council being informed, thus without consent. We are downright furious about this. The staff is being left behind with this and it puts extra pressure on the quality of education. We expect that this will be reversed as soon as possible. We could even start a court case about this, seeing the unjustifiability of the case.’ (MH)
