Cambridge student launches petition calling for exam ‘safety net’ with 312 signatures and counting

Joe Young, a land economy finalist at Fitz, has created a petition for the University to follow a mitigation system for marking next term’s assessments. It is inspired by a system introduced by the University of Exeter to “bring fairer results for 2nd/3rd year undergraduates and postgraduate students.”

This ‘safety net’ policy ensures a student’s final averages will be the same as, or higher than, their grade average as calculated up until the 15th March, as long as the student would qualify to progress or graduate based on this year’s marks. If a student attains higher than this average in assessments after the 15th March, these marks will be able to raise the student’s grade, but any lower marks will not affect it.

The University has promised to tell students what exam arrangements will be made by the 31st March.

(Photo credit: Db298)

Exeter’s Vice-Chancellor stated that “as long as you qualify to pass the year, completing the summer assessments can only help not hinder you,” because the university will not let the “extraordinary circumstances” in which students will be completing these assessments “leave [them] with a mark below [their] current overall mark.”

The universities of Southampton, Exeter and Edinburgh have all announced similar policies of “no-detriment”, and students at UCL, Warwick, Manchester and Leeds are also calling for implementation of this policy.

The petition argues that the no-detriment policy would “allow students to achieve a grade which reflects their work under ordinary circumstances, whilst providing an incentive to do well in summer assessments”, and that unlike cancelling all assessment, it would still “give students who did not achieve their desired grades last term a chance to improve.”

Young, the petition’s creator, decided to act after noticing similar petitions at friends’ universities, and cited “the lack of communication from the university regarding updates with exams” as a key motivator. He stated that “online exams carry the potential to increase disparities between individuals” (with many factors such as access to a quiet space, a computer, and connection to the internet varying wildly between students)  and that “the safety net mechanism […] would prevent such disparities from unfairly impacting students results and potential futures,” as it would be based upon previous exams sat under normal conditions.

At the time of writing, the petition had reached 312 signatures. We have contacted the University for comment.

Cover image: Andrew Dunn