Southampton, Exeter and Edinburgh University as I am aware have made an agreement to students that they have decided that whatever your average score was before this pandemic, will be your minimum benchmark for any future work submitted in the coming months, with there being no risk of your overall score dropping below this average, as long as an overall score of above 40% is achieved.

I believe this is the only way Sussex university can fairly grade any assignments/exams left for this academic year. Not only is the environment completely different having to work/revise at home given that most people find the use of the library a critical part of revising. You’ve also got to take into account less fortunate people who may not have access to a laptop or computer during this lockdown are put at unfair disadvantage over the next coming weeks/months as they have no way of looking through lectures and seminars. If we come out with lowering grades because of differing policies between different universities, we may be at a disadvantage when it comes to employability.

I hope the only fair and reasonable decision which is to follow in Exeter and Southampton’s footsteps and take the same actions towards exams here at Sussex. This way it illustrates and reflects the hard work we the students have done over the last 2/3 years and that this unforeseeable event does not ruin people’s chances of getting there justified results. I’d like to finish by saying I appreciate all the measures put in place so far but do hope Sussex look into following these universities and do the right thing.