Assessment Irregularities
You can download a copy of the University Assessment Irregularity Procedure.
Undergraduate Examination Convention C24
Postgraduate Taught Examination Convention C24
Supplementary notes:
- The Chair and the Board must follow the University’s Assessment Irregularities procedure - the latest version of which is available at www.ncl.ac.uk/students/progress/staff-resources/procedures.htm
- Where an assessment irregularity is under investigation at the time of the Board of Examiner’s meeting, all marks which would normally be made available to the Board should be presented and the Chair shall provide an oral report on the status of the case. In most cases, a deferred decision will be recorded pending the outcome of the investigation. Formally, the Board must not record a decision.
- The student may not progress until the investigation is concluded so it will be rare for a decision other than a deferral to be possible.
- The Board may nevertheless wish to provide provisional advice, for the Chair, as to the likely academic standing of the student on the basis of the marks currently available to the Board.
- Where a student is required to resit a component of assessment because of an assessment irregularity, but had not failed the module overall, the student should not be able to gain a higher module mark through the resit. In practice, an acceptable resit would allow progression but would not change the original mark. Where the penalty led a student to fail the whole module, then the normal resit arrangements would apply.
Disrupted Examinations
- When an examination is disrupted, perhaps due to a fairly minor disturbance, but it is decided not to run the examination again, the question of what, if any, account should be taken of the effects of the disruption must be addressed. The simplest rule of thumb is to assume that there has been no effect, mark the scripts following the usual procedures and compute the final return marks for all the students on the module. Then, on the basis of how these final marks compare with the other evidence available (perhaps on other assessments in the module, and on the performance of this cohort of students on other modules), a case for a suitable scaling can be made. If an adjustment is deemed necessary, then it should be made across the whole cohort, ensuring that suitable marks are returned on the relevant University scale, consistent with the classification boundaries and the descriptors (as appropriate). If there is no clear evidence that the disruption affected the final return marks, then no adjustment is necessary (but what is done, including nothing, must be carefully recorded and reported to the Board of Examiners).
