Schools/institutes may choose whether or not to apply penalties where students exceed a specified word count. This may include instances where the length of a submission is considered under the standard marking conventions rather than as a statutory penalty.
Where a school/institute does apply a penalty, students must be made aware of the penalty in advance. The penalty for exceeding the word count must be published to students; this may be in the programme handbook and/or - where a school/institute does not use the same policy for all assessments - in module handbooks.
There is no fixed penalty for submissions that are under the specified word length. In these cases, students will have displayed skill in covering the material concisely, or else have failed to fully address the material; in either situation the normal marking conventions should take this into account.
