A university turns a student’s marks into a single number on a 0-100 scale, weighted by each module’s credit value and year. That final figure decides whether the degree is a First, a 2:1, or lower. At the University of Bristol, every mark from every unit is converted to that 0-100 scale before classification starts. The first year of study is left out of the calculation altogether.
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The unit marks themselves do not carry equal weight. A module’s contribution depends on its credit points and which year it falls in. Once the marks are combined and weighted, an exam board reviews the result. It also weighs any exceptional circumstances that may have affected a student’s performance, before confirming the classification.
Where the boundary actually gets decided
That process sounds mechanical, and for most students it is. The dispute is over what happens at the edges: the students whose weighted average lands just below a boundary, and the algorithm a university uses to decide whether to round them up.
England’s Office for Students named two practices it considers “inherently inflationary” in a report published on 6 November. The first is running more than one classification algorithm on a student’s marks, then awarding whichever result gives the higher class. The second is discounting a student’s lowest-scoring credits before the average is calculated. That raises the final mark without the student doing any different work.
The regulator said providers “should move away from” both practices altogether.
The numbers that triggered the inquiry
The OfS started looking at classification algorithms because of a broader trend. In 2010-11, 15.8% of graduates at English universities left with a First. By 2020-21 that had more than doubled, to 37.7%, before falling back to 28.8% in 2023-24. A rise that size was, in the regulator’s view, unlikely to reflect improved teaching alone.
Two universities were found to have breached the rules that took effect from May 2022. At St Mary’s University, Twickenham, the share of students getting a First or 2:1 rose by 11.4 percentage points in the year after the institution replaced a single classification algorithm with two. It had also set a strategic target of lifting “good degree” numbers to 73% by 2025. Modelling by the OfS found the new algorithm produced a First or 2:1 for 79.5% of that year’s students, 4.7 percentage points more than the old system would have given the same cohort. Some 35.8% got a First outright, against 28% under the old rules.
At the University of West London, changes made in 2015-16 discounted a student’s lowest 20 credits, altered how marks were weighted, and applied more generous rules to students on a classification borderline. Those changes lifted the share of students getting a First or 2:1 to 85.3%, from 81.7% under the previous regulations, based on a sample of 856 students.
A third institution, Teesside University, was investigated but not found to have breached the rules. Its rise in “good degree” results, just 1.9 per cent when old and new algorithms were compared on the same students, was “not statistically significant”, the OfS said. It flagged, however, that the university’s continued use of a “best result from multiple algorithms” approach put it at risk of breaching the rules going forward.
Why marks alone are not the whole story
Both institutions had brought in new academic regulations before 2022. They kept using the old ones for at least some students after the new rules took effect in May 2022. The regulator chose not to take further action against either. Josh Fleming, who leads strategy and delivery at the regulator, said the reports marked a new level of scrutiny. He said the practices go “beyond the three providers in these reports”, though the regulator cannot say how widespread they are.
Bristol’s own guide explains how weighted marks build into a final classification, step by step. The regulator is now asking a different question of the sector as a whole. Not whether the arithmetic is followed correctly, but whether the arithmetic itself was built to produce more Firsts than the marks alone would justify.
