History students in exam mix up

Nightmare in Central Hall

Students enrolled in the course ‘French Wars of Religion’ were expecting a ‘Themes and Issues’ paper, an essay type assessment, but were mistakenly given a ‘Sources’ paper which requires students to assess historical documents. Examinations officer Geoff Cubitt was notified of the error 25 minutes into the exam, at which point he deemed it too late to cancel it.

University protocol requires that all exam papers are checked prior to their distribution by the module leader, the Examination Officer and an external marker. In a lapse of concentration, all three failed to notice that the exam papers had been switched, allowing students to receive a Paper II assessment on a Paper I examination day.

The History department issued a statement today to all students affected by the mistake, providing them with the opportunity to resit the exam later in the term. The department has agreed to consider the highest scoring assessment entered by each student, and will treat papers as being written under “mitigating circumstances”. This category is designed to give leeway students with unforeseen trauma or personal problems prior to exams. If results do not conform to student profiles, students have been given the opportunity to make an appeal to the University which may result in the component being waived from their degree.

Exams Officer Geoff Cubitt told affected students in an email “I hope that you will feel that this proposal - and in particular the opportunity to resit the gobbets paper - offers a feasible way forward, in what we recognize is an unfortunate and stressful situation.”

Prior to the departments reaction, a Facebook group was set up by affected students. Demanding a resit, which at the time was not confirmed, the group has almost 600 members. The group commented on the mix up: “This is a joke from the system we have all paid over £9000 for, and happens in our most important exams. While it was down to a monumental administration cock up (wrong number on the front of the paper -'1' instead of '2' which slipped past the board set up to scrutinize and ratify exams papers), potentially these students have had their right to do well in this exam taken away from them.”

One student affected by the mix up told The Yorker “I just want to reiterate the fact that the university and the dept. of history have been really good today in explaining our situation." The student added, “The issue is we are not attacking anyone, this was a mistake down to simple human error, we accept it occurred and that it was a simple mis-hap.”

Charlie Leyland, Academic Affairs Officer, issued a statement saying “I can assure you that I'm currently investigating to try and find out what happened and what possible future courses of action we can be assured of. I can't imagine how frustrating and disorientating this would be. It's really important at this stage that if you were affected that firstly you don't let this issue distract you too much from the rest of your studies, which are still really important.”

Students on the Facebook group have expressed their acceptance of the solution offered by the department and hopefully this will provoke a more intensive scrutiny of exam papers in the future.

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