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PAL Academic Course Contact Guide: FAQs

This is a guide created by the Central PAL Team that provides information and advice on being a PAL Academic Course contact.

FAQs

When can my PAL Leaders start work?

PAL Leaders can only begin work once they have completed their training and provided all of the employment documentation necessary.

Going forward, the Part-Time-Hourly-Paid [PTHP] Team have informed us that they will be managing the PAL Leader employment process and will be notifying PAL Leaders to confirm when they are able to start work.

It is vital that PAL Leaders do not start work until PTHP have verified they are able to.

What if I have Tier 4 PAL Leaders?

You need to be conscious of working hours allowance. Please flag this to the Operations Manager in your faculty:

  • HSS – Thomas Mutter
  • BUBS - Louise Hanlon-Brooks
  • FMC - Laura Hampshaw
  • SciTech – Rebecca Ellis

What if I want PAL Leaders to do extra work?

Try to avoid this where possible if it hasn't already been agreed within the faculty and PAL Central. Remember what PAL Leaders are contracted for - to run facilitation sessions. You can speak to ADSE about extra work and CC in the PAL Team as we manage the pay claims.

What if I don't recruit enough PAL Leaders?

  • You need to talk to recruited PAL Leaders about taking on more than one session. This should be manageable and ideally no more than 2 separate groups in total per leader.
  • Liaise with programmes in the same department to find PALs from similar disciplines - it doesn't matter if they take sessions for students from a different programme, as leaders are facilitators and not content experts.
  • Most PAL Leaders are L5, but opening up recruitment to L6 during shortages is fine.

What happens if one of my PAL Leaders drops out mid-term?

You need to notify the seminar group that there may be disruption or no sessions for a few weeks, but it needs to be resolved ASAP. Ask other PAL Leaders about covering an extra session, or see if a similar subject has reserves/willing leaders. A last resort is talking to timetabling and seeing if you can merge 2 groups.

For more information on managing resignations, please see here: https://libguides.bournemouth.ac.uk/PAL-ACC/role

How much are PAL Leaders paid?

For information on the current PAL pay rate, please see here: https://libguides.bournemouth.ac.uk/palcentral/palpay under the section titled 'Pay Rate for PAL Leaders'.

Can I monitor attendance?

We can grant access to PAL Leaders registers upon request.