PhD Teaching Policy

Class teaching plays a valuable role in the Department, and Graduate Teaching Assistants make up a significant part of the overall teaching timetable. As such, we strongly encourage all our PhD students to undertake some teaching during their studies at LSE and operate an ‘opt-out’ policy, outlined below.  

• All full-time PhD students should expect to teach from their second year of studies onwards.
• Students in their first year can opt to undertake other duties in lieu of teaching, such as marking.
• All GTAs should expect to teach a minimum of two class groups, and are permitted to teach more classes with the approval of their supervisor.
• GTAs should anticipate that they will teach on one of the Department’s 1^st year service level courses (ST102 and ST107) when they first join the teaching cohort. Opportunities to teach on other courses, including 2^nd and 3^rd year, will usually be available in the first instance to experienced teachers.
• PhD students may wish to teach in other departments at LSE as well as in Statistics. It is important to speak first with their supervisor and GTA coordinator to ensure that they are working within agreed limits. 
• It is the responsibility of the student to notify the Department of the number of hours they are working in total and to ensure that they comply with visa conditions, where applicable. Currently, students working on a Tier 4 (General) Student Visa can work a maximum of 20 hours a week (paid or unpaid) during term-time. This includes the summer vacation period.
• All new GTAs should expect to start at step 18.0, band 5 of the LSE Pay Framework, currently £19.86 per hour (£16.74 p/h plus holiday allowance of £3.12 p/h). This is equivalent to an annual salary of £30,570.
• The Department will advertise class teaching vacancies at the end of Winter term. Continuing GTAs and PhD students should indicate which courses they are interested in teaching the following academic year. The Department is unable to guarantee that teachers will get their preferred class group but will endeavor to accommodate requests.
• A student must not undertake any work in the Department, be it teaching, marking or any other paid employment, without having first completed a recent Right to Work check. It is the responsibility of the student to contact the Departmental Administrator to check whether a Right to Work check is required. Students will not receive payment for work undertaken before the Right to Work check is completed by HR.
• All new GTAs should expect to attend weekly classes run by the GTA Mentor and to have mentoring in their first year of teaching. Experienced GTAs are also encouraged to have a mentor and should speak first with the GTA Coordinator about this.
• All GTAs are obliged to run teaching surveys at least once per year. Some courses, including ST102, may request that surveys are run in both terms of teaching.
• The Department will take into account individual teaching scores when assigning continuing teachers to courses run by the Department as well as for the Summer School and International Programme.