On Thu, 18 Nov 1999, Terry Savage wrote:
> Surely the contract with a student is to provide a course of study at the end of
> which there is an assessment of the individual's knowledge in the subject. That
> assessment has grades of which failure is one.
>
> How you deal with any or all of the assessment grades is a separate issue.
Not quite: in offering the course and the assessment, you are contracting
to publish whether or not they have done whatever is necessary to award
the degree: that is what the award of a degree means. If it were only a
matter of agreeing to give them a personal and confidential report on how
they have done, why have the concept of a degree at all?
As you say, the assessment grades and processes are another matter. The
details of the process of how you get to the decision as to whether or
not they have done what is required have, by tradition, been personal and
confidential, in some aspects, confidential to the examiners themselves.
But as each new set of information is released to candidates, it becomes
formalised: it's useful that the DPA forces the issue of considering just
what it is that is being reported and published!
Patrick Wallace
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