New rules that will force English universities to keep students’ assessed work for five years after graduation could cost the sector more than £100 million a year, say experts who have urged the Office for Students (OfS) to rethink its approach to tackling grade inflation.
At present, many universities destroy examination scripts or other assignments one year after they are marked, with some junking assessed work just months after the end of the academic year.
Under its revised conditions of registration, however, England’s higher education regulator now requires universities to “retain appropriate records of students’ assessed work...for a period of five years after the end date of a course”. The OfS, which took over from the Quality Assurance Agency as England’s designated quality body last month, is “likely to need access to students’ assessed work, including for students who are no longer registered”, it adds.
With the OfS launching its first three investigations into alleged grade inflation, the revised rules are causing alarm among universities, which, having disposed of years of old student work, fear they are in breach of the regulator’s tougher conditions.
