The Guardian carried a welcome story at the weekend about an alternative [or, in the first instance, a complement] to university degree classification through the higher education achievement report (HEAR). The report begins:
Every university in the country will be asked to adopt a new detailed electronic record of a student's achievement to replace the "blunt instrument" of the traditional first, second or third-class honours degrees. The new higher education achievement report (HEAR), which gives an in-depth portrayal of students' abilities, will be rolled out nationally from next autumn after being trialled at 27 universities this year. Robert Burgess, vice-chancellor of Leicester University and head of a steering group that has co-ordinated the new approach to measuring student performance, said the ambition was to replace the current "crude classification system". Every university is being asked to take up the new system from next year to meet students' expectations of a better service in exchange for higher fees, Burgess said. The two systems are due to run in parallel, but the expectation is that firsts and seconds will be phased out once employers become used to the richer information available in the new report.
This has been carefully developed over a number of years, and I can only wish it well. I hope that People & Planet are watching carefully.
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