STUDENTS who do not pass modules will now be guaranteed the opportunity to either resit or repeat their assessment during the following semester as part of plans entailed in a new university policy on resit and repeat assessment.

The new policy will ensure that students can attempt failed pre-requisite modules that they must pass in order to progress to the next stage of their studies either before or during the next exam period and will come into effect in September 2009.

Students’ Union (SU) Education Offi cer, Paul Lynam was positive about the new developments, explaining that the new principle will serve to help students move to the next stage of their degree. “Programmes that have pre-requisites have to make sure that they have a quick remediation so that a student isn’t delayed for a year in their progress.” In addition to this, a new grading system will be introduced in September 2010 which will replace the current E grade with a M, or marginal grade.

Students who score 35–39 per cent in exams will recieve the M grade which will have a Grade Point Average (GPA) value of 1.4, lower than a passing value of 2.0 GPA.

Mr Lynam explained that the new grades will provide a more accessible system for students. “Right now if I get an E in Christmas, I don’t know if I should resit it in summer or not. And I have to guess if i’m going to pass 75 per cent of my overall modules for the year… [with the new grading] you can’t get too many M’s but it does give the students a chance to to know what they have to do in the next set of exams”.

There are also discussions underway regarding the amount of times students may resit or repeat a module however there has not yet been any proposals on how to initiate this as “different [academic] programmes have different ideas”, according to Mr Lynam.