As an article in the Birmingham University student newspaper Redbrick explains (http://www.redbrick.me/news/growing-opposition-to-modern-languages-restructure-proposals/), the Department of Modern Languages at Birmingham is currently facing proposals by the University to make 12 teaching staff compulsorily redundant. The proposals claim that the consequent losses in teaching capacity and programme diversity will be made up for by hiring “up to 10” new “research active staff”, by Autumn 2017.

The widely-recognised purpose of the changes is to “push the department up the research league tables”, yet the university evidently plans to resource this shift by diverting funds from teaching, as the majority of jobs to be cut (10 in total) are those of language tutors. Students on the affected programmes are understandably concerned that the fees they are paying for high-quality teaching are being siphoned off to serve a different agenda at their expense.

In fact, as stated on the Department of Modern Languages’ own website: “72% of our published work was judged to be ‘internationally excellent or world-leading’ - a quality profile that was "reflected across work in all the languages and principal research themes, and across the full chronological range". Such performance – achieved in the most recent assessment of research across the country, the Research Assessment Framework 2014, hardly justifies the draconian measures now being proposed to restructure the Department.

The University claims that the restructuring will “increase student satisfaction” and “revitalise” the curriculum. Yet the changes it is proposing can only have the opposite effect. Indeed, as a modern language student notes in an open letter to university management: “it is clear that individual language faculties are currently operating at a bare minimum number of overworked teaching staff”. Another student adds that: “It is in students’ interests to have happy, dedicated staff. The threats of redundancies hanging over staff has not only been brutal for staff but has had a great impact on studies.” (students’ letters to the University can be found here: https://resisttherestructuring.wordpress.com/).

Indeed there’s a great deal more to teaching a language -especially at degree level- than speaking it, and the Staff at risk are expert teachers, with many years’ experience developing and delivering their teaching. They have MA and/or PhD qualifications... and already very high workloads. These staff are now faced with redundancy.

Everyone involved in Modern Languages programmes at Birmingham wants it to be a hugely rewarding experience, based on inspiring interactions between our subject, our students, our teachers and our researchers. This is our shared goal, but the University's proposals are no way to get there.

For these reasons, we ask you to express your opposition to the proposed changes by signing this petition.