Penalties

Knowing how to manage your time, write succinctly and provide a complete and comprehensive piece of work to a strict deadline are skills you will develop at university. In the interests of fairness, transparency and to be equitable we have strict rules around deadlines and the quality or quantity of work submitted, and have clear penalties where these rules are not followed.

Assessments that are submitted late, without an approved extension for exceptional circumstances affecting assessment, will have a percentage of the available marks deducted in accordance with the policy on penalties available on the University assessment policies and procedures web page. After five days, the work is marked at zero. The penalty cannot result in a mark less than zero.

Penalties applied for late submission:

• • • Submitted up to 1 hour late: 5% deducted from mark

    • Submitted 1 day late: 10% deducted from mark

    • Submitted 2 days late: 20% deducted from mark

    • Submitted 3 days late: 30% deducted from mark

    • Submitted 4 days late: 40% deducted from mark 

    • Submitted over 5 days late: work marked at zero

The penalty for submitting late for a module marked on a pass/fail basis is a fail.

Guidance on late penalties for the late submission of presentation documentation is available on the student intranet.

Different penalties apply for online open exams from other types of assessment 

Online exam submissions received up to 30 minutes after the deadline will be accepted but will incur a 5% mark penalty. This penalty may be waived in the event of a successful exceptional circumstances claim. Submissions received more than 30 minutes after the deadline will be treated as non-submissions and will normally receive a mark of zero. In this case, a successful exceptional circumstances claim would result in a further assessment attempt ‘as if for the first time’. 

For practice learning modules only: if you are late completing your EOAR without exceptional circumstances you will fail the module. This failure will not overturn a practice assessor decision but it will reduce your reassessment opportunities by the number of credits awarded to the particular practice learning module.

Please be aware that marks visible through Turnitin Feedback Studio (on the VLE) are raw marks for the work itself. Penalties will not be deducted from this raw score and the mark provided is subject to the ratification process. Your final mark with all deductions/penalties applied can be accessed through your e:Vision ‘view module marks’ section. Marks on e:Vision remain subject to the ratification process prior to the Board Examiners meeting and may occasionally be subject to change.

What should I do if there has been an unforeseen event on the day of submission?

In the event of an emergency arising when an assignment is due for submission or you are travelling to attend an examination (e.g. delayed in traffic), students should contact the Department’s Student Services team by telephone immediately who will advise of the most appropriate action to be taken (01904 321321).

You can apply through the Exceptional Circumstances Policy for the late penalty to be waived but you would need to provide supporting evidence for this to be considered.

Assessment word limits

Word limits are prescribed for each specific assessment and are published on the module’s Assignment Guideline.

Assignments will be marked up to the word limit (plus 10%) and marking will cease once the word limit is exceeded.

Everything in the main body of the text (i.e. Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion and Conclusion) apart from appropriate tables and figures is included in the word limit.

Everything before the main body of the text (i.e. Abstract, Acknowledgements, and Contents etc.) and after the main text (i.e. References, Appendices etc.) is not included in the word limit.

Examination scripts that deviate from the rubric

In the event that you attempt more than the requested number of questions in an open or closed exam paper, all questions attempted will be marked and the set of questions with the highest marks that conform to the instructions on the front of the exam paper will be used to calculate your final examination mark.

Unsafe practice

For professionally regulated programmes: in any assessment, a failure to identify a serious problem, or an answer that would cause a patient/client harm, will result in failure of the assessment.