Students urge WIT to end exam results row ahead of rallies

STUDENTS will stage two rallies at Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) today urging management and lecturers to resolve a row which has meant Christmas exam results have not yet been issued.

The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) branch at the college voted last week that lecturers should not notify the results of first semester exams and continuous assessments, due to have been received by the college’s 6,000 full-time students yesterday.

The union claims WIT reduced the pay for each exam paper corrected from about €8 to about €4, even though the reaching of an agreed national pay rate is under discussion by TUI and all institutes of technology in an industrial relations forum. The union says it is not the rate is in dispute but the fact college authorities breached agreed grievance procedures under which the issue should remain unchanged until after the matter is resolved.