FAQs

With the announcement of a national lockdown from 5 January in England, universities have been asked to deliver online teaching for the majority of students until mid-February at the earliest.

The Government has published full guidance on the new national lockdown.

We can confirm that our libraries, social and study spaces, IT facilities, labs and a selection of catering outlets will be open from 4 January.

In line with Government guidance, the semester will start on 25 January with remote teaching for the majority of students. Face-to-face teaching for most courses will not now commence until 14 February at the earliest.

However, there are a number of previously announced exceptions to this and these specific courses will commence face-to-face learning as planned. The University will be in touch with students on these courses to confirm arrangements.

We acknowledge that this has been a difficult period for colleagues, both for those on campus and those who have been working remotely since March. We will continue to do all we can to support you. You may wish to access our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), provided by our partner Health Assured, which was recently introduced to complement the University’s existing support provision including Occupational Health. The EAP offers expert advice and compassionate guidance by phone 24/7, 365 days a year. It provides counselling, legal advice, bereavement support, general advice on medical problems and a range of information resources and self-help tools on a broad range of issues including finance, childcare, eldercare and other life issues. Further information on how you can support your wellbeing is available on our website.

Current government advice is to self-isolate if you have a new continuous cough, a fever or a loss of, or change in, your normal sense of taste and smell.

You should notify your line manager as soon as possible and complete the Coronavirus form. You may work from home if you feel able to do so. In any event, you will be paid your normal pay and your absence will be recorded as Special Covid-19 Leave. This means that any entitlement under the Managing absence from work due to ill health Policy won’t be affected by this absence.

For clarity, the first seven days of any absence are self-certified so there is no need to get a doctor’s certificate.

If the illness includes symptoms of Covid-19, the current advice is to contact NHS 111 online if symptoms persist or worsen and follow their advice. Do not attend a GP surgery or hospital. You should notify your line manager that your symptoms have worsened or continued and that you will not be coming to work and email covid-19@brookes.ac.uk. Our current understanding is that NHS 111 will be able to issue a medical certificate after seven days. You will continue to be paid normally and this will be recorded as Special Covid-19 Leave.

If the sickness absence is for some other illness, you should follow the usual procedure set out Managing absence from work due to ill health policy and, if necessary, contact your GP in the usual way and follow their advice.

If the reason for your absence is Covid-19 related, you will receive normal pay for the period you self-isolate or are advised not to work. This will be treated as Special Covid-19 Leave and will not affect any entitlement under the Managing absence from work due to ill health policy.

Advice from the Government and NHS for people at higher/moderate risk from coronavirus, including older people, people with health conditions and pregnant women should take special precautions. Refer to People at Higher Risk from Coronavirus (NHS).

Professional services staff, unless otherwise advised, are requested to work from home until 4 January 2021. Members of staff who have been asked to return to campus will complete an Occupational Health risk assessment form [See section above].

The Government has issued advice on returning to work safely if you cannot work from home. 

The majority of our professional services and academic staff should work from home. However, those staff who are required to support delivery of specific academic programmes that will continue with planned face-to-face teaching, as well as those involved in critical on-campus services, should continue to attend work. Your health and safety remains our priority - in light of the new variant, risk mitigations are currently being reviewed and changes will be put in place wherever possible to further mitigate the risk of transmission in the workplace. We will provide further information on this as soon as possible.

We also recognise that many of our colleagues, particularly those who are clinically vulnerable, will need to take extra care at this time. Occupational Health will be reviewing the individual health risk assessments of colleagues who are high or very high risk. Anyone who has received a letter from their GP advising them to shield should not come into work, and should discuss alternatives with their line manager.

The current government position is that if a person is displaying symptoms, they should self-isolate for 10 days and if symptoms worsen, contact NHS 111.

If a member of your household is displaying Covid-19 symptoms (raised temperature / fever and a new continuous cough, or a loss of, or change in, normal sense of taste or smell), you should follow the latest advice and the person with symptoms should self-isolate for 10 days with the remainder of the the whole household isolating for 14 days. At the end of that period, you will be expected to return to the working arrangements that have been agreed with your manager which could, for example, be working remotely.

You should notify your line manager and complete the Covid reporting form. If you are well and are able to work from home, this will be the preferred solution. If you are not able to work from home, you will be paid and this will be recorded as Special Covid-19 Leave.

Refer to Staff with Caring Responsibilities for the most up-to-date information

If your specific hours have already been scheduled in, then the University will honour payment of these hours. This paid time should be used to undertake mandatory training, prepare materials for online delivery or record lectures to be put online at a later date. If your hours have not been scheduled in and if teaching is not going ahead, then, due to the extenuating circumstances, your teaching will no longer be required for this period. However, later on in the year, the University will need to reschedule teaching over a shorter time period and your services will likely be in high demand.

Government advice is if any member of the same household is displaying symptoms then you must all self isolate for 14 days. Contact your line manager and discuss if you are able to work from home. If you are unable to work from home then this will be classed as Special Covid-19 Leave and you will be paid as normal until the self isolation period is over.

Yes. Staff who are working on campus can book tests similarly to students.

You can book your tests using our simple online booking system. Testing is available at our Headington (at The Terrace, John Henry Brookes Building), Harcourt Hill and Swindon campuses.

The exact adjustment will depend on their situation, and any programme-specific or professional body rules which may apply, but the possibilities, which are dependent on their degree programme and their stage within it, are:

If a student has passed a module, but their mark is lower than their standard mark of the previous semester:

• The student can do nothing and accept the result. They might want to do this if their mark is only slightly lower than their previous standard.
• The student can have an adjustment which means that their marks for these modules will not count towards their final classification average or Grade Point Average: this is called an ungraded pass. They might want to do this if their marks are significantly lower than their previous standard. A student can have ungraded passes applied to a maximum of two module credits in their programme (i.e. two single modules or one double module). When these modules appear on their transcript, it will be clear that they’ve passed the module, but no mark or grade will be listed.
• The student can re-sit these assessments during the Semester 2 resit period (11 - 18 July), for an uncapped mark. We recognise that resitting assessments may not be an attractive option for students who continue to be affected by the current situation, in which case they might want to opt for the ungraded passes as described above.

If a student has failed a module:

• They can re-sit any failed assessment during the Semester 2 resit period (11 - 18 July), for an uncapped mark.
• In certain limited and specific circumstances, a “compensated pass” can be applied to a module that a student may have narrowly failed.

Once a student has read the email and considered the adjustment(s) that they have been offered, they will need to decide which of the adjustments available they would like to accept - if any. The email will contain a link to a simple form where the student can indicate which of the adjustments they would like to take. The student can also use that form to tell us that they would like to accept the mark that they’ve already achieved.

Their responses will then be processed on our system, and any adjustments will appear on their Student Information page within a few days. We will process the responses as quickly as we can, but please advise students to be patient if there is a short delay between their submission of the form and the updates appearing on their Student Information page. A student will only be offered adjustments which are automatically available to them, so if they have selected an adjustment then the student can be reassured that their student record will be updated accordingly. 

The student’s marks will appear on their transcript as they are published on their Student Information page. If any of their marks are replaced with ungraded passes via this process, then they will appear as ungraded passes on their transcript - no marks will be shown, but it will be clear that they have passed the modules.

If any ungraded passes are added to their programme, the marks for those modules won’t count towards the calculation of their final degree average: which is the figure that determines the classification of their degree. This means that the number of modules on which their final average is calculated will be reduced by the number of modules on which a student has an ungraded pass.

If any ungraded passes are added to their programme, the marks for those modules won’t count towards their Grade Point Average. Otherwise, it will be calculated in the usual way.

Yes, it will be online and event assessments (exam resits) will take place between 11 and 18 July.

If a student had resits on any Semester 1 modules, then we recognise that their preparation and focus on these will also have been affected by the current situation.

If a student had capped resits on Semester 1 modules, and they pass those resits, then there is no need to adjust anything, as any pass will be an improvement on what a student previously achieved.

If a student had uncapped resits which a student passes, but the marks for those modules are lower than their previous standard performance, they can have an adjustment applied under this procedure: i.e., for those marks to be replaced by an ungraded pass so that they don’t negatively affect the calculation of their final average.

If a student had Semester 1 resits (capped or uncapped) which they fail, they can, in certain limited circumstances, have a “compensated pass” applied to the module(s) in question (see below for an explanation of the limitations on compensated passes), or they can have a further opportunity to submit or take the assessment during the Semester 2 resit period (11 - 18 July). Please note that this exceptional allowance is only available for resits which were failed in April 2020, in recognition of the sudden disruption that students were faced with at that time. Any Semester 1 resits which were previously capped will remain capped; resits which were previously uncapped will remain uncapped.

If a student has a capped resit, we will be comparing this semester’s marks against the original mark, as this is the fairest and most accurate measure of previous performance. However, if their resit is uncapped (i.e., they were affected by exceptional circumstances at the time of the original assessment) we will discount the previous mark from the calculation.

We have adjusted our assessments to make sure that - within a changed timeframe - we are still giving students the chance to show that they can meet all the Learning Outcomes which are required to pass their modules and their course.

In recognition of the disruption that everyone is currently experiencing, any students who fail Semester 2 modules will be entitled to an uncapped resit, without having to apply for Exceptional Circumstances.

However, it’s important for the value of their award that - even in these disrupted circumstances - a student can say with confidence that they have met all of the required Learning Outcomes for their programme. We also recognise that resits may not be an attractive option for students who are still experiencing disruption as a result of the current situation.

So, if a student does fail any Semester 2 modules, or any Semester 2 resits, then in certain very limited circumstances we may be able to award them a “compensated pass” on a limited number of modules (up to a maximum of 2 module credits at Levels 3 and 4, and a maximum of 1 module credit at Level 5). However, this will depend on how close they have come to passing the module in question and whether they have passed everything else required to progress.

Where applicable, compensated passes will be applied by the Examination Committees which are considering students’ results and will be published with the rest of their results. If a student would rather take an uncapped resit than have the compensated pass, they will need to let us know by responding to the email that we send to them when their results are published. Please note that this only applies to compensated passes which are applied to their first sitting of these assessments: if compensated passes are applied to any Semester 2 resits, a student won’t be able to request a further resit.

If a student doesn’t have enough marks from previous semesters for us to be able to measure their previous standard of performance (e.g. because they started their course in January 2020, or because they started in September 2019 and are in the first year of a programme which consists of ‘long thin’ modules that run over Semester 1 and Semester 2), then we can’t make any definitive judgement on whether they were disadvantaged by COVID-related disruption. However, we have said that we acknowledge that all students will have been affected in some way, so in these instances, we will offer students the opportunity of an ungraded pass or an uncapped resit, which they can choose to take if they think that their performance was of a lower standard than they would have been able to achieve without the COVID disruption.   

If a student passes their resit but their performance is below their previous standard, then as per the process described above, they can have their marks replaced by ungraded passes for up to two module credits. 

If a student thinks they have not been offered the appropriate adjustments, or they haven’t been offered any adjustments and they think they should have been, please advise the student to contact their Student Support Coordinator in the first instance.

If a student thinks that there has been an error in the way we have calculated their marks and eligibility for adjustment, please ask them to contact their Student Support Coordinator in the first instance.

The Academic Adjustment Process should not become a means of circumventing or nullifying any penalty which has been applied following an Academic Conduct investigation. However, the exact relationship between an Academic Conduct penalty and AAP will vary greatly between different cases and we will seek to cross-reference the penalties which have been awarded with students’ eligibility for AAP. If Faculty colleagues are aware of any students whose eligibility for AAP may need to be considered in the light of Academic Conduct penalties, please contact Gavin Barber directly with details.

Exam committees will decide which students are eligible for a compensated pass.

A live dashboard showing which adjustment options have been requested, including the number of resits, will be available to SSCs and ADSEs from 26 June. After 3 July, a report detailing student responses by Faculty will be sent to ADSEs to cascade to Programme Leads and Module Leaders in order to plan exam and coursework resits as necessary.