The Office for Students (OfS) has warned providers not to allow a post-pandemic increase in degree classifications to be “baked into” the system.
In its Public Interest Governance Principles, OfS expects that “the governing body receives and tests assurance that academic governance is adequate and effective through explicit protocols with the senate/academic board (or equivalent).”
Notwithstanding the role of senates or their equivalent, governing bodies are ultimately accountable to the regulator for effective management and governance arrangements. Following last week’s OfS announcement, universities might expect governors to test assurance by holding them to account for trends in degree classification, with renewed interest in degree outcomes for 2019-20 and 2020-21 – the years where the OfS analysis implies there is specific cause for concern about ‘unexplained’ grade inflation (by which it means unexplainable by its own statistical modelling).
