The students of the University of Sheffield want a safety net policy in line with other Russell Group universities who have been given a fairer no detriment ‘safety net’ policy to mitigate the impact of COVID-19.

With the current measures in place this year many students feel more could be done to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on this years students who have faced over a year of online teaching and limited access to University resources. Not to mention the detriment to mental health of students and staff alike.

Following other universities who have adopted a different safety net this year where they will be 'Reweighting this year’s marks for students in second year and above so that this year can be weighted less in the calculation of overall degree performance' this measure should be adopted at the University of Sheffield so students are not at detriment. Universities who have currently introduced a similar approach include University of York and Sheffield Hallam University. We feel disadvantaged other Russell Group universities have introduced a reweighting policy to give their students the best of two weightings.

The University of Sheffield has not responded to our concerns. A petition to reintroduce the safety net for the year 2020-2021 at the University of Sheffield has received over 3000 signatures, however the measures in place to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 changed little in response to this. 

We understand the same safety measures as last year cannot be adopted as there is no baseline to work from. Currently, final year students results will weigh twice as much as second year results. These weightings reflect the norm for pre-pandemic degree calculations. However, this year has been anything for normal and students have had to continuously adapt to ever changing regulations. Therefore, reweighting this years marks for second year and final year students is an effective way to ensure this exceptional year does not affect students final classifications detrimentally.

We want the same policy as other Russell Group universities who will be using the most successful year as the major weighting in degree calculations. This could be achieved by allowing the final year weighting to be less or greater as normal depending on which achieves a better result for the student. And for second year students for this 2020-2021 results to be reweighted to account for less if beneficial in final calculations. This would ensure the work produced this year is still considered so not to undermine the work produced in this difficult year, however also allow this year to be weighted less if it would be detrimental to the students degree classification.

Other Russell Group Universities state extenuating circumstances alone is not sufficient. They provide a reweighting policy on top of considering extenuating circumstances and reviewing marks against previous cohorts. The University of Sheffield  currently is only providing the latter, leaving students without the support offered by other universities. This petition was inspired by the current reweighting policy in place at the University of York who state they are following Russell Group guidelines, find the policy here: https://coronavirus.york.ac.uk/for-students/teaching-learning-assessment-and-progression/assessment-support-package?fbclid=IwAR13QTJCO6R7xy_gvOWjLhhFBJKZjy8Dz9unvI1eebXgTjt10bim8XcBTcg