We recognise that this strike action is set to have an impact on a number of Exeter students, and we are fully committed to representing you and advocating for you during this time. This will include representing student concerns or complaints to the University and working with them on mitigating the implications and effects on your educational experience.

Your elected Officers are in meetings with the University strongly advocating for mitigations, to get the best outcomes for you. Officers may also have individual stances on the industrial action. We will continue to work with the University to ensure that mitigations are in place and lost teaching is made up. These discussions (including any around compensation) take a long time and can be complex and nuanced, so we don’t want to overpromise but still urge students to record how they have been impacted to support this request and to enable us to engage as fully as possible in the potential mitigations.

We know there might be some challenging conversations to come, but we will always seek to prioritise the rights and wellbeing of you, our students. As your Students’ Guild we are student-led, here to support and empower you.

We also acknowledge the seriousness of the current situation for staff and understand the aims of the strike in fighting for fair pay, pensions and working conditions. Students’ university experience wouldn’t be what it is without the quality of the lecturers and staff that we have. As with previous strikes, we have had conversations with our local UCU branch to outline our approach to support students and discussing with them the impact of the strikes and the causes.

If you would like to share your view on the industrial action and strikes, you can complete our poll or email us. This will help us gauge your opinions on the industrial action, so we can feed this back to the University and inform the support that is available.

We encourage both the University senior management and UCU to hold constructive meetings with the aim of reaching a resolution which will alleviate the impacts on students. You can see the University’s joint statement with UCU here.