Hundreds of students are set to not receive final marks on time, with many expected to wait until the end of the marking and assessment boycott for their final grades. Some faculties have announced they will be issuing ‘provisional grades’ to students, whilst other faculties are operating as normal.

The faculties of English, History and Geography have all confirmed to students, in emails seen by Varsity, that they will not be issuing provisional grades. Despite the University approving the release of provisional grades, these faculties told students that they are not in a position to provide these reliably. Provisional marks are grades that have not been considered and approved at a final meeting of examiners.

The Geography department confirmed that Part IA students will receive their final grades a week before the beginning of Michaelmas term, over 2 months beyond the scheduled release. Meanwhile, English and History are yet to confirm a new timetable for the publishing of results.

Students from these faculties expressed disappointment about these arrangements with a History student telling Varsity that they have been “refused” provisional grades which could help with “graduation and progression”, while they “sympathise with the workers” the “impact on students, especially third years, could have been avoided”. An English student also told Varsity that “it is frustrating to be stuck in a liminal space where you don’t know how you have done”.

The School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS), which compromises of ten departments, told students in an email sent last week (22/06) that it supports decisions to not provide provisional marks in line with their commitment to the integrity of the exam/assessment process. The School includes institutions such as the Faculty of History which won’t be releasing provisional grades. The SHSS explained in their email that provisional marks won’t be released under the circumstance that there are too few or no markers for some/all papers and/or too few marks to allow reliable calibration of marks across papers as a whole. They go on to say that provisional marks under these circumstances would not be useful to students and possibly “misleading”.

However, other departments have confirmed they will provide provisional marks to students. The Faculty of Law confirmed in a letter sent to students that Part IB students will be provided provisional marks where possible but that marking and classing will not happen on schedule. Conversely, Part IA Law students were told that they will not receive any marks until October.

Other faculties are still operating with great uncertainty, with the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics confirming to students on 19/06 that a “significant numbers of marks are still missing” for the vast majority of students across all three Triposes (MML, HML and Linguistics) and so the Faculty are unable to meet their schedule. With the Faculty looking into the possibility of releasing provisional marks but expressing it is still unclear whether or not they are in a position to do so at the current moment.

Other departments remain mostly unaffected by the marking and assessment boycott, either providing final marks on schedule or having a hybrid system of releasing provisional marks for some papers where final marks can’t be published on time.

The Faculty of Economics have confirmed to Part IIA students that where marks are available, students will receive their final grades following the Examiners meeting. In the case of papers being missing, students will instead receive provisional marks for the papers the department has received. However, the Faculty confirmed it will be unable to rank cohorts until all the papers have been marked and approved.

Departments such as Mathematics and Engineering remain mostly unaffected with Varsity having spoken to Part IA students for both subjects, who confirmed their results are expected to be published on time. These departments also saw little disruption during the staff strike in Lent term.

The University and Faculties continue to provide updates on the marking and assessment boycott. Two task forces have been set up by the University to provide support to staff and departments on issues surrounding exams and assessments. In an update on 14/06, the Pro-Vice Chancellor, Professor Bhaskar Vira, said he was “sorry about the disruption to this year’s examination cycle” but assured students “that colleagues in the University are doing all they can to achieve a resolution to the industrial dispute”.