To admit, to pass and to fail

Most students now apparently get a 2:1 of some sort. How this has come about perhaps matters less than what to do in the future. A levels are changing, and we should start looking ahead and introduce complementary changes for degree results. The obvious answer is to use transcripts and bring the UK into line with practice elsewhere in the world. Though employers may need some guidance about their significance, most are sensible enough to realise that the more information they have about prospective employees, the better their recruitment procedures.

The real question is how to make the move, which is something which most university teachers recognise is inevitable. Clearly no one is going to break rank on their own, so some collective move is needed. The Quality Assurace Agency is possibly the body to set this going given John Randall's recent pronouncements (Why I, THES, June 9), but perhaps what we also need is an agreement about a common marking scheme that everyone can understand and that expresses a range of clear differences. There is patently something wrong with a system that crowds most students into a 10 per cent mark band between 60 and 70. What we need is a way of indicating high, modal and threshold grades within degree classes. In turn, this might free us from having to give marks only in the 2:1 range, and also free students from thinking that the only thing that counts is getting an upper second.

As matters stand, we are now selling our students short; they are paying dearly for degree certificates that do not express their achievements, the range of their abilities or their future potential.

Martin Coyle. Cardiff University