Thirst for firsts

The study on degree classifications referred to in your story was a collaborative undertaking contributed to by colleagues from Anglia Polytechnic, Derby, Liverpool John Moores, London Guildhall and Middlesex and Oxford Brookes universities as well as from the University of Wolverhampton. Collectively we form the Student Assessment and Classification Working Group.

In the New Academic paper, which David Turner and I co-authored, we argued that informal customs and practices at examination boards, particularly around compensation and condonement, are often as important in arriving at decisions about classifications as are the formal rules and regulations. Perhaps the time has come to gain greater consistency across the sector by engaging in collegial discussions about academic regulations, as members of the Southern England and the Northern Universities Consortia for Credit Accumulation and Transfer are doing so productively.

Harvey Woolf

University of Wolverhampton