A number of students have contact the office regarding the need to resit failed exams. They have heard about condoned fails, here's what the Academic Regulations (AR 5.21) say:
Failure may be condoned in up to 30 credits of modules of an MA, MBA, LLM, MPA, MRes, or MSc masters award where all of the following conditions are met:
- the module mark for each failed module is 40.0 or higher; and,
- the credit-weighted average mark across all modules, including the failed module(s), is 50.0 or higher; and,
- a failed module is not designated as ‘core’ (must be passed outright) in the programme regulations.
HOWEVER, the school strongly recommends you take any resits you have; if you pass it will improve your overall grade average, which is what your eventual degree classification will be based on (Pass/Merit/Distinction), and you will not have a fail on your degree transcript.
You are automatically enrolled in any resits you have. There is no resit fee. In general all SEF's resits are synoptic, what that effectively means is we discount all previous marks, and the final result is based purely on the resit exam. We don't get rid of your original marks entirely, if you have a mark of 46.7 now, and in the resit in August you only get 43.2, you will keep the higher mark. So, by taking the resit you can't get a worse mark.
Anyway, resits are a long way away, and no one needs to take any decisions now. But hopefully this answers a number of questions about resits that have been sent to the school office since Monday.
