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Aged 39, Annie Callaghan is a native French speaker employed on a part-time contract to teach French at the University of Essex. She is described as a teaching fellow and has worked this way for three years. Her contract lasts ten months of the year. Each June she is given her P45 form, her membership of the pension scheme is cancelled and she is laid off. Each autumn she is rehired.

Before joining Essex she worked at Anglia Polytechnic University for five years where she was paid by the hour. Then she taught about ten hours a week, around 60 per cent of the maximum load. There was no pension, no sick pay and no payment for lesson preparation. "There was no guarantee on their part ever," she explains. "There was an expectation that I would be there in the new academic year because I had all this experience, but never any legal commitment." (Anglia Polytechnic University has since changed its arrangements for employing language teachers.) Ms Callaghan has a BA degree in humanities from the Open University and a Swiss diploma for teaching French. She teaches French language to first, second and final-year students. The Essex contract is a better arrangement for her. There is an occupational pension, even if it applies to only ten months of the year, and the pay is better. Ms Callaghan earns Pounds 14,425 over ten months and considers Essex is a good employer.

In the two months when she is not earning, Ms Callaghan takes unpaid leave. "Being a mother of a young daughter, I don't really mind too much that I'm on a ten-month contract. Personally I am quite happy the way I am, but I can see that if I were the sole earner my status would matter because I would have absolutely no job security. I could be counting on this income, and it might be gone."

At times she feels frustrated by the insecurity, particularly "when you've been doing your level best to get everything done by the end of the academic year and then you receive your P45". The good thing is that she receives a contract for the following year at the same time as she gets the form laying her off.

Does she find the insecurity keeps her on her toes and induces her to give the very best? No, she says. Her performance comes from a sense of duty towards the students.