University of Liverpool updates its ‘safety net’ policy

Students have been told some schools are partially or fully exempt from the ‘safety net’ policy, which would’ve guaranteed their academic position for the year, in a recent e-mail from the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of University of Liverpool, Gavin Brown.

Before this e-mail, all students were told at the end of March: “Providing you attain a pass in all mandatory modules and meet the intended learning outcomes for the year, then we will calculate two overall marks for you”.

The e-mail went on: “The higher of these two averages will be used for progression and degree classification purposes.”

The second email comes just three weeks after Brown made the initial statement about the policy, during which no schools were mentioned to be exempt.

Brown said: “Due to professional body and accreditation requirements the following are either fully or partially exempt from the application of the ‘safety net’ “. Brown goes on to list that all programmes within the School of Health Sciences, Medicine, Veterinary Sciences, Dentistry and Psychology (except a masters course) will be affected.

Despite the new e-mail from Brown, some aforementioned schools such as Psychology have already contacted students to firmly deny this and to inform students that the policy does in fact still apply to them.

Will Speight, a first year Psychology student told the Tab: “After so much uncertainty and strings of repetitive and inconclusive emails from the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, it was a real kick in the teeth to hear that certain accredited courses would be exempt from the Safety Net – less than a month before exam season.”

Speight adds: “We then received a hastily scripted email from the Head of the School of Psychology telling us this is not true, so many Psychology students like myself are unsettled and confused.”

“Although this email from Gavin Brown aimed to clarify the policy, it begs more questions than it gives answers”.