After announcing last week that York would be releasing details of its own ‘safety net’ policy, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Teaching, Learning and Students, John Robinson, has revealed the University of York’s plans to assure students’ grades are minimally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The system is supported and endorsed by YUSU President, Samara Jones, and Academic officer, Giang Nguyen, who are both named as signatories of the policy.
The University had previously said that it was “carefully reviewing” the approaches taken by other UK universities, with Giang Nguyen claiming in an online post earlier this week that it would be “heavily informed by the Exeter model”. This appears to have been confirmed by the announcement of York’s own version.
York students will not achieve less overall in their end of year or end of degree grade than their average up to this point. The safety net will use an average of students’ achievement completed up to 13 March, in an attempt to ensure students’ grades are not unfairly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Robinson added that the University has “looked at what other universities have proposed, we have considered what will work best for York and we have endeavoured to develop a well thought through solution that can work for all our undergraduate students.
“We are determined to focus on an approach that means that none of our students are disadvantaged by circumstances beyond their control, and everyone is rewarded for the hard work and achievements made throughout the full length of their studies."
“At the same time we want to maintain an appropriate and approved level of academic integrity to ensure the validity and value of the degree or award achieved. There is a delicate balance to be maintained.”
He also made it clear that the University “are doing our very best to balance allowing you to show what you are capable of, and protecting the long-term value of your degree classification.”
The estimator tool attached to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor’s email is able to calculate what is being referred to as students’ ‘safety net score’, but experienced technical difficulties upon launch due to “too many users” looking to discover their scores.
The safety net policy does not apply to Postgraduate students, MBBS students from the Hull York Medical School and potentially some students from other accredited programs, despite these students inevitably facing similarly huge and unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the University's proposed operating manner in response.
Robinson explained the University's decision directly to postgraduate students in a separate email to postgraduates, saying "the undergraduate ‘safety net’ depends on the fact that we are able to take a long-term view of what a student has achieved. As postgraduate taught students, you are with us for a much shorter period, and so we do not have a sufficient run of marks within your degree that shows what you are capable of. Many of you have completed only a small portion of the assessed work planned for you this year.
"Some have completed a single essay, or a poster presentation. We feel it would be unfair to extrapolate a whole award mark based on less than half of the total credits in the year. This could lead to you receiving a very high or a very low mark that does not reflect your capabilities. We really want to ensure that future employers or places of study are able to have an accurate reflection of your achievements."
However, Giang reassured Nouse that “no one will be left behind”.
The University of York’s ‘safety net’ policy summarised:
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The safety net takes into account what you have achieved in work submitted up to 13 March 2020. The university will then secure this in light of already secured academic achievement, this is the ‘safety net score’. You will get to know what this score is prior to the summer assessments and, provided you qualify to pass the year, your academic-year average will not be lower than this score.
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The safety net will apply to undergraduate students who are in second year or above at this point, including integrated masters students, but not including HYMS MBBS students.
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The safety net can only be used by students who meet the requirements to progress to the next year or, in final year, to be awarded their degree.
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Students must still pass remaining modules to progress by earning a mark of 40 or above or having modules compensated. In most cases, this means you still need to complete your summer term assessments.
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The University expects all students to continue with their studies until the end of the academic year 2019/20.
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Integrated Masters students will only have to meet the requirements to progress to the next year of the Bachelor’s degree.
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Some students whose degrees are externally accredited, or overseen by Professional Standards Bodies may not be eligible to use a safety net score because of the nature of their qualification. This is not yet confirmed, and the University is working with the appropriate bodies to fully determine what they will allow. Students on these programmes will be contacted by their departments in due course.
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Following summer term assessments, if your assessment score takes your mark up higher than your safety net score, then this higher score becomes your new overall score. If the results of your summer assessments would take your mark down below your given safety net score, then we will use your safety net score.
How the University calculates your safety net score:
1. The University will work out the credit value of all the assessments in the 2019/20 academic year with submission dates before 13 March 2020. This will be done for all individual completed assessments, regardless of whether or not there are other assessments for a module that have not been completed. This will take into account both the number of credits for the module and the percentage contribution of each assessment to the module.
2. The University will then calculate a total, credit-weighted, average of all those assessments.
3. If the total credit value of the assessments is 60 credits or more, then the credit-weighted average of those assessments will be the safety net.
4. If the total credit value of the assessments in the current academic year (step 1) is less than 60 credits, the remaining credit deficit will be made up using your previous year average. (e.g. if only 40 credits have been completed this year, the remaining 20 will be assigned previous year’s average to calculate safety net score for 2019/20 academic year).
