Concern that affected no students resolved to OfS’ satisfaction

Back on 23 January the Office for Students released a report based on its investigation into the University of Wolverhampton’s business school.

It was one of the shortest and strangest reports to come out of this part of the regulatory process. The initial premise was a low continuation rate, specifically on the BA (Hons) Business Management – but as so often seen this was a problem that the university (those gold-plated internal quality assurance processes) had identified and taken steps to rectify long before the OfS rapid response team had switched the blue lights on.

The course had been subject to a course revalidation (something that was probably due to happen anyway, cyclical quality assurance is a good thing) including a new focus on business practice, and new (larger) modules.

OfS was reasonably impressed, but noted an issue – depending on when in the year students took a particular module, they would have the opportunity to take either two or three resits of the assessment (after that, if needed, there would be an opportunity to resit the full module – which is how we get to the theoretical maximum number of six resits that OfS keeps going on about).

As the report notes:

Arguably, the university assessed the January and September cohorts of students on the BA (Hons) Business Management consistently. Each cohort overall completed six modules which allowed three attempts at an assessment, and six modules that allowed two attempts at an assessment, over their course of study. However, because the underlying approach was based solely on the space available in the academic calendar, with no basis in teaching practice, the assessment team was not convinced that staff had considered the inequality this presented to students, who might have strengths or weaknesses in different assessment approaches or understanding of module content

You can see at a glance how this issue came about, and you can also see that students are technically being treated differently based on timetabling convenience rather than any pedagogic rationale.

Presented with this finding, the University of Wolverhampton made a change to academic regulations for 30 credit modules. From January 2025, all students will be permitted a single resit attempt (so two attempts in total) for any assessment where they fail to achieve a pass grade – a failure here would necessitate retaking the complete module in question. As before, resit marks on the undergraduate course are capped at 40 per cent.

But best of all, Wolverhampton has also confirmed that no students had ever submitted six attempts at an individual piece of assessment: not just on the BA (Hons) Business Management but on any course at the University of Wolverhampton since the regulations originally came into force.

The Office for Students has pronounced itself content with this change, and is now clear that Wolverhampton is no longer in breach of condition B4. It admits that number of students potentially affected was minimal: indeed, given that no student had ever used all six theoretical opportunities I think “near-zero” would be clearer).

The whole exercise as been a triumphal display of risk-based regulation in the theoretical interest of students.