The Burgess Review

Universities UK

The Burgess Group Final Report

Foreword
From the Higher Education Academy Art, Design, Media Subject Centre

The Full version of the Burgess Group Final Report “Beyond the honours degree classification” was published by Universities UK on 16 October 2007 and is available from their web site at:
http://bookshop.universitiesuk.ac.uk/latest/

The Higher Education Academy has produced the following “media response”:

“The Higher Education Academy welcomes the significant contribution made by the committee in investigating a complex and contentious area. The report reflects extensive consultation with universities and employers and is an important staging post in the development of the higher education system.

“The principal focus of measures of student achievement should be on students themselves. They deserve to get a richer picture of what they have learned. The Higher Education Achievement Reports proposed by the committee will provide an opportunity to recognise the breadth of student achievement, over and above traditional degree classifications. The Higher Education Academy will support universities and colleges in sharing effective assessment practices and developing systems that will enhance everyone's understanding of what students gain from their experience of higher education”

This version of the executive summary has been abstracted from the final report and is intended to support debate across the art, design and media sector on how teachers and curriculum developers will respond to its proposals. Although the report is not a consultative document there are issues that are likely to effect ADM subjects especially in respect of bullet points 2 and 3 of the proposals section and how core content Core content will be “common to all institutions” can be developed whilst retaining meaning and relevance across a diverse range of subjects where the core of those subject is synonymous with their specialist focus. This might present particular challenges for ADM subjects when delivering on these proposals “will require action, support and cooperation by higher education institutions, … employers’ organisations, …and a range of sector support and development agencies.”

The ADM-HEA would like to receive expressions of interest from colleagues for joining an authorship group to consider how subjects in the ADM ‘footprint’ are best able to respond to the report’s proposals. The authorship group will meet for one day to deliver a draft commentary to the report to be published by the ADM-HEA. If you are interested in participating please send your contact details to adm@heacademy.ac.uk. You can also send written comments on the Burgess Group Final Report to this email address.

ADM-HEA authorship groups are intended to offer a basis for continued debate by our colleagues and demonstrate to other audiences, in this case UUK and other stakeholders to the Burgess Group how the proposals might be implemented.
 

Executive summary

Introduction

The UK honours degree is a robust and highly-valued qualification. It is the core product of the UK higher education system. This report considers the honours degree classification system, which measures a student’s performance on an undergraduate honours degree programme. All UK higher education institutions use the same classification nomenclature which is almost universally applied to honours degrees.

Issues of how best to assess, calculate, record and present student achievement receive continuous attention by UK higher education institutions both individually and collectively. In 2004, the first Burgess Report – the report of the Measuring and Recording Student Achievement Scoping Group – established the case for fundamentally reviewing the current system for classifying UK honours degrees, which it considered was no longer fit for purpose. A Measuring and Recording Student Achievement Steering Group was established in February 2005 to consider, develop and consult on practical proposals for the implementation of the Scoping Group’s recommendations. Over the past two years the Steering Group has undertaken a detailed consideration of the issues, which it is now presenting to the sector in the form of this report.

Case for change

A range of related and highly compelling factors have converged to make the case for change inevitable, and indeed, long overdue. These include the general direction of higher education policy and an increasing emphasis on widening participation and skills, the transformation of the higher education experience, changes to the labour market, student perceptions of what constitutes a ‘worthwhile’ degree and institutional practice. In particular the Steering Group was convinced that:

• A summative system, which gives the appearance of ‘signing-off’ a person’s education with a simple numerical indicator, is at odds with lifelong learning. It encourages students and employers to focus on one final outcome and perceived ‘end point’, rather than opening them to the concept of a range of different types and levels of achievement, which are each part of an ongoing process of learning that will continue beyond the attainment of their degree.

• There is a need to do justice to the full range of student experience by allowing a wider recognition of achievement.

• The higher education sector has been transformed out of all recognition from that which gave rise to the traditional honours degree classification mechanism, which was devised for a traditional concept of higher education.

•  The present system cannot capture achievement in some key areas of interest to students and employers and many employers could be missing out on the skills and experience of potential recruits merely because these students had not attained a First/Upper Second.

• The focus on the top two degree classes wrongly reinforces an impression that a Lower Second or a Third Class degree is not an achievement when, in fact students with such degrees have met the standard required for honours degree level, graduate qualifications.

• Institutional methods for calculating the degree classification could be clearer in order to help students’ understanding of what they are being awarded and what is being recognised by the institution.

• The means of representing student achievement should be radically reformed- ideally to replace the summative judgement with a more detailed set of information.

Options for change

Replacing the current honours degree classification system represents a major upheaval for the sector and other stakeholders and the Steering Group insisted that there must be clear, and clearly understood, benefits at the root of any change it proposed. The Group consulted the sector on the possibility of using either a shortened or a lengthened scale of degree classification. Neither stakeholders generally, nor the sector itself, coalesced around a particular approach. On the whole, respondents tended to suggest changes within the current system rather than considering a new system. This reinforced the Group’s resolve to ensure that its proposals should build on existing practice that the sector could develop.

The Steering Group considered at length whether some form of overall summative judgement needed to be retained at all. Most other countries currently seem to accept the need for simple and straightforward summative information relating to a student’s overall achievements but the Steering Group was unable to find among those systems a suitable alternative to the honours classification. It concluded that the summative judgement itself is the problem.

Summative judgement thresholds distract and detract from information which conveys a fuller understanding of the skills and knowledge bases acquired by the student. The Steering
Group concluded that, ideally, the summative judgement should be replaced with a more sophisticated approach that better represents the outcomes of student learning and encouraged personal development and understanding in the context of lifelong learning. The
Group believed there was a need for greater emphasis on the additional information currently contained in the European Diploma Supplement and academic transcript. If these were combined, and incorporated a more broadly-conceived and more detailed version of the academic transcript, they could form the basis for a better approach. By academic transcript we mean an authoritative and official record of a learner’s programme of study, the grades they have achieved and the credit they have gained.

A key conclusion that the Steering Group drew from its work was that establishing a replacement system for the current honours degree classification would be fraught with critical dangers that should be explored, and tested in more detail before any radical change was made. It therefore recommends a stage of detailed exploration, development and testing to be carried out in parallel with the existing honours degree classification system over the next four years.

Proposals

The Steering Group proposes that:

• By academic year 2010/11, following a period of detailed development, a Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) will be the central vehicle for recording all university-level undergraduate higher education student achievement in all UK higher education institutions.

• The HEAR will be a single document, based on, and developed from, the current academic transcript, and incorporating the European Diploma Supplement. It will contain a wider range of information than the current academic transcript and will capture more fully than now the strengths and weaknesses of the student’s performance. It will also contain information about academic credit, which will link directly to the national credit framework for the part of the UK in which the award is made. Core content will be common to all institutions, which will be free to add additional information as they see fit.

• The HEAR will contain information which the institution is prepared to verify. Further work should be done on how to measure and record skills and achievements gained through non-formal learning but this, along with other student-generated/driven information, should be part of Personal Development Planning (PDP). Beyond the honours degree classification:

• In the short/medium term, the HEAR will also continue to contain an overall summative judgement, verified by the institution. During this period it is likely that this will remain the existing honours degree classification but we anticipate that alternatives might develop as the information available in the HEAR becomes richer.

• In parallel, the UK higher education sector will have considered, debated and resolved a range of key issues and principles relating to assessment. The outcomes, in turn, will feed into the development of the content of the HEAR.

These proposals should be implemented in stages and following detailed exploration in a number of areas that address and resolve the key issues identified in the Steering Group’s report.

Our proposals have been firmly, and deliberately, rooted in current developments and build on existing practice. The Steering Group intends that they will ensure that the UK higher education sector will be well-positioned to meet the demands of the future. The proposals contain a transitional, exploratory stage during which all stakeholders will be actively involved in developing a new system. This will require action, support and cooperation by higher education institutions, the National Union of Students (NUS) and students’ associations, employers’ organisations, the UK higher education funding bodies and a range of sector support and development agencies, including the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

The proposed timetable for implementation allows institutions to develop the HEAR in parallel with the honours degree classification, or other summative judgements. The Steering Group designed this process intentionally so that, as the work progresses, and the HEAR becomes established, the benefits in terms of the richness of the information it yields about each individual student will increasingly come to be acknowledged and understood. As a consequence, the Steering Group believes the existing degree classification will decline in importance until it should no longer be considered necessary although it could not and did not assume this would be so.