Does operating a PAR scheme mean a net increase in the workloads of academic staff?
It depends what you have in place already and how much time academic staff are used to spending on academic feedback, student guidance, one-to-one support and administrative tasks involving students. The outcome of implementing PARs in a school should be a clear structure of support for student development on an individual basis: • to which all students have equal access • which defines and contains tutors’ responsibilities • which maximises student confidence in the quality of the formal tutoring system and minimises unscheduled student encroachments on staff time. A common pattern adopted by a number of schools which already operate PARs is based on a short one-to-one meeting, three times per year, between the personal tutor and an average of twenty personal tutees. Some schools allocate certain selected activities to group meetings rather than to one-to-one tutorials.
