Undergraduate Progression and Awards Regulations

- Regulation 1: Standardisation of Progression Regulations

• Progression regulations should be standardised. Some variation may be appropriate to accommodate requirements from external professional and accrediting bodies.

- Regulation 2: Annual Progression

• Progression will be on an annual basis.


• Students will be permitted to carry failed modules from semester to semester but not from year to year.


• Students will receive provisional results after Semester 1 assessment.


• Courts of Examiners will convene after semester 2 and consider the results from both semesters.

- Regulation 3: Progression Threshold

• All undergraduate programmes will be required to provide clear grade descriptors representing a pass.

• Progression threshold will not be higher than the pass mark in 4-year UG programmes.

• There should be a standardised pass mark as far as possible across all UG programmes.

- Regulation 4: Minimum Credits to pass a year

• There should be a balanced credit-load across semesters.

• All modules and components of modules will be compensatable.

• The number of credits to pass a year will be 60.

• 10 ECTS may be accumulated at ‘Qualified Pass’ (i.e. marks between 35-39% where the pass mark is 40% or 45-49% where the pass mark is 50% for some professionally accredited courses).

• If a student has achieved both Fail and Qualified Pass grades in modules completed in semester 1 and semester 2, they will be required to present for reassessment in all failed components in all modules for which they obtained either a fail grade or Qualified Pass. The reassessment session usually occurs at the end of August to coincide with the start of Semester 1 of the next academic year.

• There is no aggregation.

- Regulation 5: Degree Award Calculations

• Students entering programmes with the new architecture will have their degree award calculated on their final two years’ results, weighted at 30% and 70% respectively.

• This regulation will apply only to new entrants to the new programme architecture in 2018-19 (i.e. students entering in 2018 to study Science Engineering, Engineering with Management, Clinical Speech and Language Studies, Clinical programmes) and 2019-20 (i.e. students entering all other programmes in September 2019).

• Current award calculations will apply for students who are entering existing programmes in 2017 and 2018 and for continuing students.

- Regulation 6: Number of years to complete a degree

• No change from existing practice. The maximum number of years to complete an undergraduate degree will be 6 for a 4-year programme and 7 for a 5-year programme.

- Regulation 7: Repetition of a year

• Students are not permitted to repeat any academic year more than once and may not repeat more than two academic years within a programme.


• Repetition of a year is in full, i.e., all modules and all assessment components**.


• A student’s academic record on their transcript will show clearly the time lost through repetition of a year.


• There will be an option to repeat a year on an ‘off-books’ basis.

- Regulation 8: Reassessment

• Same progression regulations, including compensation, for assessments relating to semesters 1 & 2 and to reassessment.


• Automatic right to reassessment for a student who has achieved a fail grade in any of their modules and is not eligible for compensation.


• Students (in all years) should only be required to re-sit examinations or re-submit coursework for failed modules or components thereof.


• Students are not permitted to present for reassessment in any module for which they have achieved a pass grade, in order to improve their academic performance.


• Rescheduled exams within the session will no longer be permitted.

• Different reassessment modalities permitted.

• No capping of marks.
  

- Regulation 9: Special Examinations

• Special Examinations will no longer be available from 2018/19.