Grade point average misses the pass mark in the UK

Efforts to introduce a grade point average system of degree classification in the UK appear to have run out of steam.

In 2015 more than 50 institutions expressed an interest in using the US-style average mark scheme alongside their existing degree classes, and the following year about 10 providers told a Higher Education Academy survey that they planned to start running GPA pilots.

However, Times Higher Education understands that the GPA Advisory Group that led these efforts, chaired by Sir Bob Burgess, former vice-chancellor of the University of Leicester, is no longer active. Meanwhile, the HEA’s successor organisation, Advance HE, said it was no longer involved in efforts to encourage uptake of GPA, which takes an average of students’ marks throughout their course to give a final score between 0 and 4.25.

A key factor appears to have been declining interest from the Westminster government. In their 2015 higher education Green Paper, ministers said that the system of firsts, 2:1s and so on was, on its own, “no longer capable of providing the recognition hardworking students deserve and the information employers require”. The government said it would “like to encourage” greater uptake of GPA and proposed that uptake of the new system should be a factor when considering teaching excellence framework assessments.

But the subsequent White Paper – the basis of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 – made only passing reference to GPA and left it to universities to decide whether to mention it in their TEF submissions.

More broadly, concerns over degree classifications appear to have shifted away from “granularity” and towards grade inflation – a problem for which GPA is not regarded as a solution. A consultation on changes to the degree classification system by the UK Standing Committee for Quality Assessment, which was prompted by concerns over grade inflation and closed on 8 February, made no mention of GPA.

Waning government interest was clearly a blow to the GPA movement, said Matthew Andrews, university secretary and registrar at the University of Gloucestershire, who was closely involved with the introduction of GPA at Oxford Brookes University. However, it was also true that GPA did not have the capacity to fix all the problems people hoped it would, Dr Andrews said.

For example, a key question was whether first-year marks should be included in the average score or not.

“People could not come to an agreement on the rules and without the impetus to do it [from government] they just didn’t,” Dr Andrews said.

Oxford Brookes and Abertay University are thought to be among the few UK universities that provide students with a GPA alongside their degree classification.

William Hammonds, policy manager at Universities UK, said the group “keeps GPA under consideration as part of our wider discussions on grade inflation, as an alternative way of classifying degrees”. However, the work on grade inflation was “designed to protect the sustainability, integrity and comparability of the degree classification system in the UK as it is”.

“GPA comes with its own set of questions, such as which GPA system you use. There would be work to do in the UK if a case were to be made to replace the current established and well-understood model,” he said. 

anna.mckie@timeshighereducation.com