Background

The Engineering Council would value insights from HEIs on any impacts on students and departments of the Engineering Council’s Compensation and Condonement policy.

Note that Professional Engineering Institutions are circulating this survey on behalf of the Engineering Council to the HEIs whose programmes they accredit, apologies if you receive duplicate invitations to respond.

Compensation and condonement policy (www.engc.org.uk/compensation)

Many UK universities’ examination board rules include some allowance for compensation or condonement of limited failure in one or more modules, where this is compensated by a stronger performance across the programme as a whole.  The Engineering Council has adopted a definition of compensation and condonement for use in consideration of the accreditation of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering degree programmes. 

The Engineering Council defines compensation as: “The practice of allowing marginal failure (ie not more than ten percentage points below the nominal pass mark) of one or more modules, often on the basis of good overall academic performance.”

The Engineering Council defines condonement as: “The practice of allowing students to fail one or more module(s) with a fail mark of more than ten percentage points below the nominal pass mark yet still qualify for the award of the degree.”

In the consideration of the accreditation of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering degree programmes:

1. Evidence that all Accreditation of Higher Education Programmes (AHEP) learning outcomes are met by all variants of each programme must be provided before accreditation can be granted.

2. No condonement of modules delivering AHEP learning outcomes is allowed.

3. A maximum of 30 credits in a Bachelors or integrated Masters degree programme can be compensated, and a maximum of 20 credits in a Masters degree other than the integrated Masters degree.

4. Major individual and group-based project modules must not be compensated.

5. The minimum module mark for which compensation is allowed is no more than ten percentage points below the nominal module pass mark (or equivalent if a grade based marking scheme is used)

The key consideration in the rules above is to ensure that graduates of accredited engineering degree programmes have met all the programme learning outcomes specified in the Engineering Council’s AHEP specification.

Please respond to the following questions:

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* 1. Please identify your department to ensure that we are not counting any duplicate responses

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* 2. How many programmes does your faculty/department/school offer that are currently accredited by one or more professional engineering institution on behalf of the Engineering Council? (Please refer to your most recent accreditation visit report(s) or the Engineering Council Course Search Database for a list of accredited programmes)

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* 3. Have the Engineering Council rules on compensation and condonement resulted in your HEI not seeking accreditation for any programmes? (please tick; if yes, please indicate how many)

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* 4. Have the Engineering Council rules on compensation and condonement resulted in your HEI adding additional non-accredited programme variants? (please tick; if yes, please indicate how many)

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* 5. Does your faculty/department/school offer any other unaccredited engineering degree pathways for students (please tick)?

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* 6. Has your department obtained new or revised derogations from your standard university degree regulations in order to meet the Engineering Council’s revised compensation and condonement policy?

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* 7. Has there been an increase in the number of students who are unable to progress or graduate from your department’s accredited degrees due to disruptors, such as:

·         students struggling due to their education prior to HE being disrupted by the Covid pandemic;

·         teaching and/or assessment of their degree being disrupted during Covid restrictions;

·         teaching or assessment interrupted by industrial action;

·         laboratories closed due to presence of RAAC concrete?

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* 8. Do you have any further comments, or questions you would like to raise?

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* 9. If you would like to discuss the impact of the Engineering Council’s compensation and condonement policy further please provide contact details:

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* 10. If you would like to subscribe to receive the Engineering Council’s HE Bulletins (which are typically sent two to four times per year) please provide contact details

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