Oxford SU have released a statement responding to the University’s new exams policy, announced last Friday. The SU has been running an ongoing campaign for students taking exams this academic year.
The ‘Fair Outcomes for Students’ campaign is focused both on individual and cohort-level challenges. Some of the key policies advocated for by the campaign include rescaling cohort marks if cohort performance is lower than pre-pandemic years, reweighting examined components where appropriate, and an enhanced mitigating circumstances process. The SU are also advocating for mitigating circumstances procedures put in place this year to be extended to all students who have matriculated by MT20.
The University’s new exams policies take up some of these suggestions, including a rescaling policy and new mitigating circumstances procedures. In the SU’s response, they highlighted some of these campaign wins, but also pushed for an expansion of the University’s current response to include more policy changes on a course-by-course basis.
The Sabbatical Officer team at the SU said: “We will continue to lobby for a more robust, transparent, and expanded mitigating circumstances process, including pushing for mitigating circumstances to affect outcome marks, not just classifications. Additionally, we welcome the University’s announcement of allowing for the inclusion of ‘explanatory statements’ for submissions affected by access to resources, which will be utilised during the marking phase.”
“We will lobby to ensure that this is implemented as broadly as possible, not just as a mitigation for coursework submissions, but also for exams. We believe exams are similarly affected by the ongoing difficulties of resource access for students.”
