QMUL announces university-wide assessment mitigations promising more details by end of Jan

Queen Mary’s has become the latest London university to announce a safety net policy to support its students – joining LSBU, Greenwich and SOAS.

QMUL has acknowledged the impossible situation that the Covid-19 pandemic has put students in and has just released its plan to ensure that the “unprecedented levels of stress and anxiety” that the pandemic and remote learning have caused do not detrimentally impact students’ degrees.

The university has not issued the specific details of their assessment policy yet, but has announced that the policy will “take into account any overall effects on students this academic year, alongside interventions that recognise individual students’ challenges”. Students can expect therefore a university-wide mitigations policy, but with departmental and individual cases catered for by a flexible set of support mechanisms.

QMUL has also announced the core aspects that it will continue to base considerations around:

• “Streamlining our Extenuating Circumstancespolicy and processes to reflect the impact of Covid-19”
• “Extending deadlinesfor coursework where necessary (as decided by the Head of School/Institute)”
• “Ensuring our Examination Boardstake account of patterns in student performance, compared with previous cohorts, and individual students’ circumstances. The Subject Examination Boards and Degree Examination Boards include external members who provide commentary on academic standards, achievement trends, fairness and consistency”
• “Schools/Institutes will consider how access to local, national and international academic resources and facilities, which otherwise would have been available, have been impacted by Covid-19 restrictions”

QMUL promises that student wellbeing is central in the process of working out the details of the safety net policy, and assures students that the university continues to work with student representatives to develop policies that consider the student voice and suit everyone.

Hopefully the remaining London universities look to QMUL as an example and can release equally reassuring statements soon!