Progress monitoring

Progress monitoring plays an important role in the development of your PhD research. It involves you submitting a piece of work demonstrating your progress followed by a critical discussion with an independent reviewer(s), and potentially members of your supervision team.

During the face-to-face element of the review you get the chance to discuss your work and intentions for future development in your own words and have the opportunity to gain some incredibly valuable feedback.

It’s also a chance to talk about any issues or concerns you may be having about your research and how these might be addressed.

It is your responsibility to follow the procedures set out by your registered faculty to demonstrate satisfactory progress to ensure continued registration – and therefore funding from the BCCS.

Reviews are typically held on an annual basis (the minimum requirement) however your school or department may operate a system with more frequent monitoring points.

You should ask your lead supervisor for further information about local practices and consult faculty-based information for postgraduate students.

You also share a responsibility with your supervision team for the tracking of your review dates and planning for the timely submission of work for review.

You should not rely on faculty-based postgraduate research (PGR) admin teams to initiate your efforts to meet progress monitoring requirements - this should be something that is integrated into your research timetable.

Your reviewers and supervisors will be invited to provide written feedback about your work to members of staff within your faculty. 

You will also be invited to provide comments of your own that are considered together by senior academic staff who are responsible for determining whether your research progress is satisfactory.

If your progress has been confirmed as satisfactory then you are permitted to continue with your research degree, incorporating the feedback and advice given to you by the reviewer(s). 

You should make sure that the feedback is discussed at your next supervision session and that you are confident in continuing your work with a plan in mind.

You need to demonstrate that you are making satisfactory progress each year, based on your performance since your last review point. 

If there are significant issues raised during your review, or if previously identified issues persist from one review to another, then it may be determined that you have made unsatisfactory progress.

If this happens there is a formal procedure that comes into effect designed to provide you with the guidance, support and opportunity to bring your research up to the expected standard within a defined timeframe.

It should be clear that a possible outcome of progress monitoring may be the withdrawal of your registration as a research student.

You are actively encouraged to discuss any issues or concerns you may have about your research - please see our sources of guidance and support section for details on who to approach.

The general process for progress monitoring is outlined in the University's regulations and code of practice for research degrees.

The specific procedures you should follow will be faculty or even department/school-specific and may include the use of a particular system (e.g. SAFE in Engineering, STaR elsewhere) which you may need to confirm is accessible by your supervisors and reviewers who may be used to different systems.

You should refer to your faculty-based guidance material for further information on what to do and discuss the requirements with your supervision team.

If you are unsure of anything you should contact the BCCS Manager or faculty-based postgraduate research (PGR) admin staff.