Letter to Council 4 July 2023

We wrote to the governing body of the university to explain how management’s refusal to acknowledge the impact of the boycott and actions to neutralise it are creating a ticking time bomb that affects all students and the institution. There is a digest of this letter on this flyer.

Dear members of Council,

We hope you are well. We are writing in advance of your meeting on 6th July to update you with regard to recent developments at the university, and to ensure that some important matters are brought to your attention.

In this letter we concentrate on the issue of QMUL’s reputation and governance as affected by the current state of Quality Assurance and Academic Standards. Since it is one of the Primary Responsibilities of the Council to be ‘the institution’s legal authority and, as such, to ensure systems are in place for meeting all the institution’s legal obligations’, we want to inform you about the realities on the ground as they relate to the demands from the university’s regulatory body, the Office for Students. In their brief of 12 June 2023, they laid out three key objectives for Higher Education providers in dealing with the Marking and Assessment Boycott:

1. Students are not disadvantaged
2. Students can graduate or progress on time where this is appropriate in academic terms
3. Any degree awarded accurately reflects a students’ academic achievement

Our members have informed us that across the university, schools have been put under undue pressure to ‘deliver’ the finalists, and as a result have made decisions that raise concerns regarding QMUL’s capacity to meet the objectives set out by the Office for Students.

Students are not disadvantaged

The haphazard application of Quality Assurances and mitigations has created unfair differences and disadvantages between students. There is a concerning disparity in replacement marking and feedback. From reports from members, we understand the Senior Executive Team has not demanded any replacement marking for first- and second-years, or MA students. Instead, while finalists are being told to accept marks by people other than their teachers, other years have not been informed about the boycott, or when and how they will receive grades and feedback. Continuing students rely on those marks and feedback to make choices for their next year, to learn from past mistakes, and to meet job, course, and year-abroad requirements. The single-minded focus on graduation ceremonies has unduly deprioritised these students and their needs.

For finalists, the replacement marks and removal of ordinary procedures such as thorough moderation and second marking has created troublesome disadvantages within the year group, programme cohort, and even modules. Some students have feedback from their teachers, others have a very limited set of feedback, some have received obviously the wrong feedback due to the last-minute and overstretched nature of ‘replacement marking’, others have no feedback at all. To spell out some of the examples we have seen across the university:

• Students on the same module have been treated differently. On large modules taught by multiple members of staff, some students have received the marks of the people who taught them, and others received marks from the ‘replacement marker’. Where in the case of the former, markers will have taken into account the expectations set in the classroom, discussion of materials, coverage, and support, in the latter all that was absent. These interventions have affected students differently, on the very same module.
• Finalists’ work has been scrutinised by unequal levels of expertise. Is the expertise of the ‘replacement markers’ evidenced? Did the ‘replacement markers’ discuss ‘agreed marks’ with second markers? In some Schools, dissertations received marks with unequal levels of expertise: some did get two experts and their dialogue, others got one expert, overruled by an anonymous marker, some didn’t get any evidenced expertise at all.
• In effect, some dissertations were double marked and some were not. Where ‘replacement markers’ remained anonymous, the procedure for solving the discrepancy between marks has remained opaque. The requirement is that, where there is a discrepancy between the first and second marker and they cannot agree (which would be the case if the ‘replacement maker’ remained anonymous), there should be a third marker and their marking should be evidenced in notes and feedback (Assessment Handbook 5.26), not just favour one. There is no evidence trail of third marking or of any feedback available to students or External Examiners.
• Students have also been hit by unequal weighting of their learning process throughout the year. Double marking ensures quality checks but also ensures dialogue and bringing in the year of supervision into the assessment, allowing the first marker to discuss with the second marker any decisions or hurdles that affected the finished product. Where ‘replacement markers’ have been brought in, the year of supervision conversations have not been incorporated into the assessment. Therefore, a number, but not all, of our students have been deprived of having their year of work taken into consideration in the final ‘agreed’ mark.
• Only some students now have access to the people who read their work and wrote feedback. Due to Schools protecting the anonymity of the ‘replacement marker’, students are not able to discuss their work with the people who read it and could help them develop as learners.
• In some cases, students’ complaints reveal that their work was assessed against completely different marking criteria from the ones set out by their module convenor. In other cases, particular scholarly interpretations have been dismissed, despite being discussed in class as valid. These finalists’ grades have suffered from the ‘replacement marker’ without any understanding of or consultation about in-class agreements and discussion, both of which are key to assessment policy.
• In other cases, finalists are incapable of even complaining because their marks and feedback are still not revealed to them, and QMUL demands any complaint and appeals has to be based on officially released marks. Graduations are mere weeks away, and these students won’t have been given a chance to question their treatment. Consumer Protection Law puts high store by adequate complaints procedures, and the Office of the Independent Adjudicator compels universities to issue substantial refunds when students haven’t been supported by an adequate complaint procedure. This ticking time bomb betrays the image of ‘business as normal’ the passing of the Examination Boards would like to project.

The current state of assessment across the University is not in line with the ‘Queen Mary Assessment Strategy’ as set out in the QMUL Assessment Handbook pp. 72-73: this patchy feedback is neither authentic, nor contributing to students’ understanding, let alone streamlined. The inequality in treatment of students created by the replacement marks and mitigations affects all students.

Students can graduate or progress on time where this is appropriate in academic terms

In its determination to push through graduations on the original schedule, members believe the Senior Executive Team lost sight of the second part of that objective: appropriateness in academic terms. Ordinarily, we suspend regulations for individuals, to account for circumstances beyond their control that do not put into question their academic achievements. To suspend regulations en masse, without reference to academic concerns misdirects the purposes of flexibility in regulation, thereby undermining any future application.

Not only do the mitigations not fit academic terms, they undermine them. For our assessment system to function, it has to be effective and appropriate.The current mitigations disadvantage this year’s student cohorts because:

• Procedures have not been clearly articulated. QAA requires all procedures to be reliable, consistent, fair, and valid. To do so, procedures have to be transparent and consistent. For every School, endless questions remain. Have mitigations for the first- and second-years been communicated? Have the means by which ‘agreed’ marks for finalists have been reached been communicated? Have communications about procedures been contradictory? Academic judgement is not in question, but the procedures that facilitate solving discrepancies require transparency to allow academic judgement to stand and be fair.
• Have established procedures been followed? In some Schools, the procedure taken in resolving discrepancies has not been transparent. There is no evidence that a third marker remarked all dissertations with discrepancies, even though the Assessment Handbook requires a clear paper trail of all notes and comments that can be read by external examiners (5.29). The Assessment Handbook also notes (5.27) that the third examiner should have subject experience. If there is no evidenced subject experience, and no paper trail of a third marker, the ‘agreed mark’ is not achieved through one of the five established and accepted methods of the University (Assessment Handbook 5.11). The lack of transparency around the ‘agreed’ marks leaves Schools open to a wave of appeals and challenges by students.
• Our assessment system is to aid students to develop. QMUL is committed to using feedback constructively and for students’ development. Have students had the chance to discuss their feedback with the ‘replacement markers’? QMUL’s Assessment Handbook (5.78) states that we strongly encourage making it possible for students to discuss their assessments with examiners, as this diminishes the number of appeals. The university’s lack of transparency in procedures is opening us up to a rise in appeals.
• Assessments are about (1) meeting assessment criteria and (2) measuring the learning outcomes. Replacement markers may know the registered assessment criteria for the type of assessment, but not the particular learning outcomes. These are partly stipulated in handbooks, but, crucially, also further articulated and spelled out in the classroom and supervision. The replacement markers did not have that knowledge.
• Assessments are not isolated pieces. QMUL champions a culture of development over time and interlinking assessments to aid students in that development, as noted in the Assessment Handbook encouraging learning development from in-course assessments (5.77). Since the ‘replacement markers’ treat these assessments in isolation, do not have the background of the module, and, due to their anonymity, cannot be informed about the interrelation. Does feedback reveal misunderstanding of how assessments fit within the wider assessment of the student for the module?
• The threshold for progression has been arbitrarily lowered, and students do not know when they will know their results or what the impact will be. How will late summer resits be sorted? What with students who actually failed? How do we ensure Associate students are not treated differently?

There is a distinct lack of transparency about the precise mitigations set in place, as well as about what will happen in the longer term. The procedures are opaque and ill- communicated. The communication about the mitigations and their motivations to students, staff, and external examiners has not been timely, transparent, and sufficient. Mitigations for any group but finalists are still not determined, and even finalists’ procedures and marks are being changed in response to queries. We risk Schools coming across as arbitrary if we don’t get procedures articulated clearly.

The mitigations are merely to let the examination boards go ahead; they do not actually serve to establish academic achievement. The Subject Exam Boards have been made to push through graduations and progression on shaky if not completely absent evidence. The fiction they create of things running as normal is covering serious concerns that will need to be addressed in the mid and long term. The Senior Executive Team is putting that pressure onto the Schools, who will have to justify decisions taken, try to avoid chaos in September, and deal with the onslaught of student complaints.

But the Senior Executive Team will have to answer questions as well. The Competition & Markets Authority’s UK Higher Education Providers – Advice on Consumer Protection Law from 31 May 2023 explicitly states that ‘Force Majeure’ does not include Industrial Action, since relations with the employers’ own employees are in the employer’s power (CMA182 5.37). The arbitrary bonfire of regulations raises questions about governance.

Any degree awarded accurately reflects a students’ academic achievement

Our regulations are not empty rules; they are the tools through which we generate reassurances that the student achieved the assessment objectives and learning outcomes. To assure the standards of QMUL’s degree to the wider community, employers and other institutions have to be able to trust the mechanisms that provide the Quality Assurances. In the process of neutralising the boycott, Schools, with support from ARCS, have suspended key procedures that should generate and guarantee students’ marks.

• Did second marking happen in practice? Where there has been no discussion between first and second markers, that doesn’t constitute second marking. Any anonymously attended ‘agreed’ mark is not following an established procedure. It is, moreover, not a system put in place across the board, for all students in the School. Some Schools have changed procedures in the case of a couple of modules, and retained the standard procedure in others.
• Since moderation and even mark entry has been suspended for non-finalist modules for the sake of letting exam boards go ahead, that layer of Quality Assurance is not present. We need moderation to ensure comparability.
• Some co-taught modules have not benefited from calibration. A module convenor is expected to ensure all feedback and marks are consistent across the multiple seminar groups, to guarantee fairness. This has not happened for many Level-Four and Level-Five modules, where marks of TAs are already released.
• External Examiners have not seen the assessments of first- and second-year students which have not been marked yet, and yet they have been asked to sign off on modules and their quality.
• Some modules have ‘projected’ grades: no one marked the assessments and their grade is merely projected on the basis of previous work. This is a direct contravention of the Office for Students’s Condition B4.2, which states that courses can’t be assessed on the basis of a limited range of subject material covered. Assessment is not valid if it only covers part of the course content. Students’ ‘projected’ marks do exactly that: they only take into account the first part of term, and students could have both blundered or really pulled themselves up in the second part. Projected grades do not measure students’ achievement.
• We have no clear system in place to deal with academic misconduct in the case of assignments that have not yet been marked. Given the well-documented rise in academic misconduct cases, this dive in the dark is setting us up for chaos in the autumn.

The lack of reliability and credibility (normally achieved through Quality Assurances) puts QMUL at odds with the Office for Students’ Condition B4. We risk our registration by not protecting the mechanisms that make assessments credible, reliable, and effective.

Outside of the regulatory body, the reduction of Quality Assurances put our students at risk. Without the reassurances, the graduation certificate is an empty piece of paper, as the 20 Film finalists who were paid £500 each to make up for the non-classified degree last July can testify. The checks and procedures make those certificates meaningful, without them, our finalists have been given a very different and much devalued ‘product’ from the one they signed up for three years ago. There has been much talk about the ‘student experience’ under lockdown and with disruptions. But where staff worked beyond the call of duty to pivot classes to online delivery and provide support to students despite their own difficulties, resulting in this cohort getting more work from their teachers than the ones before them, this final step of the certificate is where they are being duped. The question marks around the validity of their degree certificate will continue to haunt them unless we solve the arbitrary suspension of Quality Assurance.

The recruitment of ‘replacement markers’, the ‘mitigations’ put in place, and the façade created by the exam boards may seem to serve the Principal and the Senior Executive Team in the short term, but they are harming QMUL in the medium and long term. The measures put in place are in line with what UCEA appears to have briefed. But UCEA is not the one who will reap the consequences. The Senior Executive Team’s response to the Marking and Assessment Boycott falls foul of the Office for Students’s demands, and, more importantly, are not to the benefit of the university and of our students. For the sake of appeasing UCEA, the Senior Executive Team is risking QMUL’s standing. And our rankings are already tanking, with QMUL dropping 18 places and out of the top 50 in the UK University Rankings, and back to our ranking from 2012 in the QS Rankings. We simply cannot afford a further hit to our reputation, which had been held up by the academic standards.

QMUL stands to gain from UCEA returning to negotiations and addressing the concerns of workload and underinvestment which members undertaking the Marking and Assessment Boycott are trying to draw attention to. Spiralling student-staff ratio, underinvestment in academics and teaching facilities: they are the metrics that pull us down in the rankings.

The only way out of this boycott is negotiation. Dragging it out will only mean the façade cast by the Examination Boards will come crumbling down in the next few weeks. Many university VCs have shown leadership in breaking with UCEA and calling for a return to the negotiating table. Rather than neutralising the action and facing the consequences in the upcoming months, QMUL could choose to be on the side of staff and of a better future for Higher Education.

We hope that you have the opportunity to discuss and ask questions about the above matters on 6th July. We wish you a productive meeting.

Yours sincerely

Zara Dinnen and James Eastwood, QMUCU Branch Co-Chairs