18. Penalties

For academic misconduct

18.1   Information on what constitutes academic misconduct in respect of assessment (including plagiarism, collusion, cheating, ethical breach in research, impersonation and the use of inadmissible material) should be provided, or referenced by a web link, in faculty and/or school handbooks together with specific information about the consequences of such misconduct. It may be necessary for individual schools to develop additional guidance on what constitutes academic misconduct, to reflect the relevant academic discipline.

18.2   When recommending a penalty to a Board of Examiners, an appropriately constituted committee/panel will consider the offence and penalty independently of its potential impact on the student’s degree classification. Whether the penalty for offence in question should be reflected in the degree class to be awarded is the judgement of the board. In such cases, Boards of Examiners should take into account any effect on the degree classification that the penalty already has had.

For the late submission of summative coursework

18.3   Students must be made aware of the existence of penalties for not meeting submission deadlines in the relevant school or faculty handbook.

18.4   Coursework that is submitted after a deadline should be subject to the following penalty, unless an extension has been agreed by the School, prior to the deadline, or late submission is justified by reason of illness or other validated exceptional circumstance (see Section 13): 

• For assessments in modular programmes[1]on a 0-100 scale: the late submission of work will incur a fixed absolute penalty of 10 marks for each 24-hour period after the agreed deadline, not including public holidays in England or University closure days. If the work is submitted late such that at least four such 24-hour periods have elapsed, the mark awarded will automatically default to zero.
• For non-modular programmes (BDS, BVSc (including Accelerated Graduate Entry), MBChB) on a 0-100 scale: a fixed absolute penalty of 10 marks is applied for work that is submitted up to 24 hours after the agreed submission deadline not including public holidays in England or University closure days; a mark of zero is awarded thereafter.
• For assessments in modular  or non-modular programmes that generate a grade but are returned on a pass/fail scale: the late submission of work will incur a fixed absolute penalty as above to the grade that the student would have received on the marking scale used for that assessment. Where the application of the penalty causes the grade to fall below the ‘pass’ threshold, the assessment is awarded a ‘fail’ mark.
• For assessments in modular  or non-modular programmes that are competency-based and do not generate a mark: the late submission of work will incur a ‘fail’ mark.

When applying a penalty for a late submission, a ‘day’ constitutes 24 hours from the submission deadline to the next day which is not a public holiday in England or University closure day (e.g. if a submission deadline is 15.00 on Monday, a ‘day’ constitutes the 24 hour period up to 15.00 on Tuesday).

18.5   Penalties are applied in the form of a mark reduction from the mark the student would have achieved.

18.6 For group coursework, it is the collective responsibility of the student group to ensure and confirm that the work is submitted before the deadline. Students involved in group work for assessment may also be required to individually provide evidence of their participation in and contribution to the work of the group. If group work is submitted late, the penalty applied to the marks of individual student(s) may be retracted where there is evidence that they have satisfactorily contributed to the group work in time for the work to be submitted by the deadline, as determined by the Unit Director of other member of academic staff.

For exceeding the size limit in summative assessment 

18.7   Faculties’ policies for defining the size limit of summative assessment, by assessment type, and any penalty for exceeding the defined limit, for its taught programmes, should be in accordance with the following:

18.8   Whether specific forms of assessment are subject to a size limit, and if so:

• Whether the size limit is defined by reference to the number of pages (with font size, line spacing, margin size, and page orientation requirements), by a word / character limit or other defined limit.
• The penalty where the defined limit is exceeded.

18.9    Students must be informed, at or before the date of issue of the assessment, the size limit (including how the size limit is defined) and the penalty for exceeding the limit, if any, as reflected in the approved unit specification. 

18.10    The policy of the faculty that owns the unit will apply. It is important for students whose home programme is based in a different faculty are made fully aware that the policy applied in the submission of assessment for a unit may be different than the policy of their home faculty.

18.11   It is the responsibility of the student to ensure that the work complies with the defined size limit prior to submission and to certify the size (word or page length or other defined limit) on the front cover sheet when submitting the work.

18.12   The student in question must be informed of the decision to apply the penalty for exceeding the defined size limit.

 

---