2. Significant changes to the regulations and code of practice for taught programmes for 2024/25

Key changes

Undergraduate and taught postgraduate

  1. Student attendance and engagement: The relevant sections within the previous policy (which is retired) has been updated and transferred into a new section within this Code. The general ability for an undergraduate exam board to require a student to withdraw from the programme due to a failure to attend regularly has been replicated for PGT programmes also (section 6).
  2. Exam boards: In order to provide flexibility on arranging exam boards, a new clause allows for the existing named exam boards to be combined into a single exam board within a faculty where that is agreed by the faculty and signed off as part of a transitional arrangement for 2024/25 (see section 20: Boards of examiners).
  3. Marking practices and assurance: A new section sets out expectations regarding marking practices, including when work should be single or double marked, and how they combine with moderation to assure the quality of the mark (section 16).
  4. Final date for student registration: The latest date that a new undergraduate student in the first year can register has been extended: from the end of week 2 to the end of week 3. The latest date for returning undergraduate and new and returning taught postgraduate students to register will remain as the end of week 2. (24.3 and 34.3)
  5. Supplementary year (SY) policy updates (section 9: Supplementary year):
    • Students should only undertake units in a SY within their programme of study that they have not passed (and not any additional units)
    • Reflect that the five-year cap for student visas has been removed for PGT programmes and integrated masters degree programmes (9.6)
    • Clarify that the credit point limit on third attempts in a SY due to academic failure may encompass multiple units rather than being a single unit (9.3a)
    • As a default, students should be permitted a SY with attendance; although they may request to take units as assessment only where certain conditions are met (9.2)
    • The term ‘repeat year’ has been merged into ‘supplementary year’ within regulation for modular programmes; the ‘repeat year’ term will be retained for non-modular programmes given it has a particular purpose within those regulations.
  6. Applying size limits and penalties in assessment: The existing policy for setting a size limit for summative coursework has been extended to allow faculties to set a limit for other forms of assessment where it is important that boundaries are set to guide the workload of students (18.7).

Taught postgraduate only

  1. Academic regulations for taught postgraduate programmes: With a new structure of the academic year being introduced, a new set of academic regulations have been established. Key changes are the removal of the progression point between the taught units and research unit (replaced by the ability for a programme to designate a single taught unit as a pre-requisite onto the research unit) and a new common classification method, as well as some other associated updates to policies on reassessment and extension to study (sections 36-39)
  2. Dissertation in PGT programmes: Existing content on dissertations has been combined into a single section within the main body of the Code. (34.15)

Minor changes / clarifications

Undergraduate and taught postgraduate

  1. Updates as a result of programme simplification:

  • The University’s credit framework has been updated to account for the programme simplification policy, specifically to ensure that the stated minimum credit points at the highest level to award a qualification aligns with the new unit sizes (4.30).
  • A new statement has been added to reference the requirements on mandatory units in the programme simplification policy (4.20).

  1. Updates to support the introduction of the new structure of the academic year:

  • Reference to the internal ‘Setting assessment deadlines and managing extensions’ document when setting assessment coursework deadlines and coursework extensions has been added.
  • The existing process for new programmes that wish to have non-standard start/end dates are subject to an approval process has been formalised to ensure that the implications of any deviation are fully considered (4.23).
  • The title of exam boards that include reference to particular months that they previously took place in has been updated to accord with the new SAY: to be the ‘summer assessment’ exam board (previously known as ‘summer’ exam board); ‘mid-year’ exam board, ‘summer reassessment’ exam board and ‘PGT finalist’ exam board.
  1. Update to marking scales with the introduction of the new institutional marking criteria: To accompany the already approved new institutional marking criteria (IMC): an update to reflect the change in conversion between the higher points on the 0-20 marking scale and fixed points on the 0-100 restricted marking scale (15.6).
  2. Exception for reassessment where a unit has been passed: The clause to permit reassessment where a student has already fulfilled the criteria for the award of credit for a unit has been updated to reflect that it is permitted as a possible mitigation to account for the impact of exceptional circumstances or as a result of an assessment deferral or the student self-certifying absence from the assessment (30.10).
  3. Pre-requisites: The definition and status of a pre-requisite as a condition of entry to subsequent units has been added (Annex 1: Glossary).
  4. Status of a unit specification: The unit specification is the definitive record of the content of a unit and the criteria for the award of credit (4.7).
  5. A-E marking scale: The A-E marking scale has been removed from the permitted marking scales given its use has been phased out (15.6).

Undergraduate only

  1. Attempting assessment to be eligible for conditional progression: The criteria to permit a student on an undergraduate programme to conditionally progress to the next academic year has been updated such that students no longer need to have attempted the relevant assessments in the unit (30.15.2).
  2. Classification in integrated masters degree programmes: The classification boundaries for integrated masters degree programmes are clarified, including that third-class honours degrees are unavailable (32.9).
  3. Defining condition for awarding 120cp in the final year of UG study: A student needs to achieve the related pass mark for that year of study in order for the award of 120 credit points to be applied (30.19).
  4. Exit awards from an intercalating programme: An Ordinary degree may be awarded on an intercalated programme as an exit award where the student does not complete their intercalation year and withdraws but has achieved at least 300 credit points overall (28.14).

Changes to the Annexes

  • Annex 2: Series of updates to the specific programmes that have their own regulation, including for the new MRes Economics and for the International Foundation Programmes whereby students who have previously been withdrawn due to academic failure not being permitted to register onto the same or cognate programme of study.
  • Annex 3: A number of updates to the University Assessment Regulations, including:
    • Any ethical breaches in an undergraduate or taught postgraduate student’s research will initially be considered as academic misconduct under the Assessment Regulations.
    • The previous clause on where a student answers more questions than required in an examination paper has been re-added to the Assessment Regulations, that is: where a student provides an answer to more questions than is required, the marker should mark all the answers and use the marks from the highest scoring answers to calculate the assessment mark.
    • Introduce the option for students in the first year of an undergraduate programme, who have demonstrated a poor understanding of our academic integrity expectations by committing a first misconduct offence, to be provided with an additional learning opportunity in the form of a newly designed academic integrity awareness course.
    • As incoming study abroad students are not eligible for re-assessment, exclude re-assessment a possible recommendation of the academic misconduct panel.

Approved in 2022/23 for implementation in 2024/25:

  • Defining reassessment opportunities Students on modular programmes should only be required to take the failed assessment components in the unit(s) that they have failed overall, with identified exceptions for reassessment in a Supplementary Year. (30.5 and 37.7 / 37.10)
  • Institutional marking criteria Introduce a new level-specific institutional marking criteria (section 15).
  • Programme structure simplification Introduce a series of amendments to reflect the approved key changes within the programme simplification policy on how we structure our programmes (i.e. unit sizes, minimum credits required for award, requirement for a year of study in an UG programme).