Assessing the Extent of Use of Part‐time Teachers in British Higher Education: Problems and Issues in Enumerating a Flexible Labour Force

Abstract

This article first describes the several types of part‐time teacher in higher education in the United Kingdom and laments the paucity of data about them. It discusses how the Higher Education Statistics Agency [HESA] was founded and the extent of its coverage of part‐time academic staff, focusing specifically upon how the criterion for submission of an individual staff record was developed and the implications of this criterion for enumerating the numbers and use of part‐time teachers. Then are presented approximate survey‐derived estimates of the numbers of various types of part‐time teacher in United Kingdom higher education. There may be as many as 75,000 teaching positions, and probably more, in six particular categories of part‐time teacher and it is suggested that perhaps 50,000 of the persons performing this work are not individually enumerated by HESA. Various reasons are suggested why many institutions might have been reluctant to compile full data on their part‐time teaching staff, before a conclusion is given which stresses how contemporary developments in employment law are making it increasingly incumbent upon institutions to have adequate data on all their teaching staff, including those employed on different types of part‐time basis.