Uni caves in on feedback

The University has accept Students’ Union (SU) demand for a more efficient academic feedback system, offering a revised policy and putting an end to the protracted negotiations over this year’s Student Charter.

The Charter, which sets out the aims of the University, is jointly authored by University officials and the SU’s Sabbatical Officers. Until Friday, there had been no agreement over regulations for the return of assessed work.

The University had originally proposed a four-week limit for the return of work, with extentions allowed “where the nature of the assessment or exceptional circumstances require that feedback cannot be made available with the four-week timescale”. The SU dismissed the wording as “imprecise” and “unabitious”.

On Monday, however, SU president Nick Swain signed a newly amended Student Charter. The new clause on feedback, as agreed by the University and the Union, retains the four-week deadline but allows for no exceptions.

> ”This is an extremely positive first step towards making sure that all students get prompt and quality feedback.” – James Entwistle, SU education officer

The change in policy comes in the wake of controversy over [Warwick’s poor score in 2012’s National Student Survey (NSS)](https://theboar.org/news/2012/oct/3/uni-feedback-slammed-survey/), released earlier this month. The NSS showed Warwick students rated feedback at the worst aspect of the university experience.

The University was rated as one of the worst in the Russell Group for feedback, and significantly worse than Coventry University.

The University’s vice-chancellor Prof. Nigel Thrift was said by a number of sources to be “furious” with the results of the survey, and the University has since announced that it will look into its feedback policy and roll out the best practice across all departments.

It has also been agreed that academic performance will now be included in the criteria to decide the allocation of funds to faculties and departments – a move which adds significance to the results of surveys like the NSS.

It is believed that the University is taking steps to ensure that there will be no repeat of the poor NSS figures.

Education officer James Entwistle called the new feedback policy “an extremely positive first step towards making sure that all students get prompt and quality feedback”.