In part 7 you will have read about how to apply to become a tutor. Sections of this are now out of date and this post is aimed at clarifying the processes just now.

You might be aware that the OU is moving its tutors to new permanent contracts from 1 August 2022, with annualised salary payments. That is bringing with it a whole raft of changes to procedures and policies, including the recruitment process. The BOC currently covers the recruitment process for modules starting before 1 August 2022. However we will be starting to advertise roles for modules starting after 1 August 2022 as well, and there will be differences.

The main one is that rather than there being separate rounds of recruitment for tutors, each with a specific deadline, roles will be advertised as required, with 3 weeks from the date the advert is posted to the closing date. The style of the advert will be somewhat different too, you will see reference to a discipline area as well as module codes, and there will be a range of FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) offered on the advert. For example, an advert might say 0.1-0.4 FTE, which would equate to the equivalent of 0.5 days – 2 days per week. The actual FTE offered to an individual candidate would depend on both how many modules they had the relevant skills to teach, and how much FTE they were interested in. Since the actual teaching hasn’t changed, there will still be significant peaks and troughs in the work, including possibly several months where you are not teaching at all, but the salary you would receive would be annualised, ie you would be paid the same amount every month.

If you have any queries about this please post and we'll find the answers

Nigel