Dear Leadership & Academic Board,
 
We are writing this letter with regards to assessable items in the clinical years of the Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine course.
 
Deakin Medical School has adopted an entirely pass-fail assessment structure, with Melbourne Medical School following suit. The literature surrounding this modality of assessment is resoundingly consistent, with less stress experienced by students (1), greater cohesion between students (1), and perhaps most pertinently, no adverse effects on objective academic performance (2).
 
In previous years, academic markers were utilised to form the ‘Intern Z score’ which enabled comparison between Victorian Medical Schools. With the adoption of pass-fail assessment structures, the ‘Z score’ has become obsolete. By maintaining academic rankings at Monash University, this serves our cohort in a counterintuitive manner. As the only school with assessable markers, our ranks divide us, as we are compared with our own peers (i.e., there are higher and lower scoring Monash students), whilst students from other schools are academically ‘equal’.
 
Moreover, remote proctoring and invigilation for end of year written exams are fundamentally unable to preserve academic integrity. Students may leave their rooms during the exams without monitoring, which significantly impacts the utility and reliability of exam marks. Hence, this further reiterates the necessity of adopting a passing grade only (PGO) structure for all clinical units of the medical course, to both counter the ramifications of academic misconduct, and to hopefully reduce its incidence in future.
 
We hope that Monash University Medical School’s leadership and academic board take this letter into consideration, and appreciate the well-founded concerns of the cohort.
 
 
1.     Dederichs M, Weber J, Muth T, Angerer P, Loerbroks A. Students’ perspectives on interventions to reduce stress in medical school: A qualitative study. PloS one. 2020 Oct 15;15(10):e0240587.
 
2.     Spring L, Robillard D, Gehlbach L, Moore Simas TA. Impact of pass/fail grading on medical students’ well‐being and academic outcomes. Medical education. 2011 Sep;45(9):867-77.