On Wednesday, the 22nd of April, the Student Executive team held a Student Executive Live meeting via Zoom. This was an opportunity to ask me, and the exec any questions you have regarding the current situation. It was great to see how many students engaged, and it would be great to get your feedback on how you found this whether you engaged through Zoom or our Facebook Livestream, and if this would be beneficial to repeat in the future.

No-Disadvantage Policy

The main queries I had were around how does the policy work more generally, and why does the policy only apply to certain assessments.

The policy sets out to ensure you maintain or get higher than your current average for this semester, with the volume of disruption at the moment we knew students would be worried how this would impact current assessments as well as upcoming exams. Which is why, alongside the no-disadvantage policy we would move summer exams online, and reduce the number of assessments where possible. This way we could try to support as many students as possible, especially for students who will have limited access to IT or the Internet.

There is also the further issue of accreditation, for many courses at the University they are regulated by professional and accrediting bodies, this means that in many cases we have to stick with the accreditation bodies guidance meaning that some assessments will have to go ahead and where possible we will apply mitigation through exam boards. 

Tuition Fee Updates 

We have drafted a letter calling on the Government to clear all student debt for student funded through bodies such as Student Finance England and to refund self-funded students. So far, over 5,000 students have supported the letter and this is great. The more support we can get the better, we will be asking students to reach out to their local MP’s soon so please support and share the letter as much as you can 

https://www.change.org/p/department-for-education-clear-tuition-fee-debt-for-home-students-refund-international-students

If you have any questions or want specific updates on anything you can email me here.

Keep safe everyone!