The final Burgess Report - Higher Education Achievement Report

Universities UK Bookshop


The tag above will give access to the Universities UK bookshop. The edition of the Burgess Report in question is in PDF Format.

This is an enduring topic within the higher education world, the debate revolving around whether the final summative judgment that a student gets at the end of his
(or her) Bachelors degree is indicative of the amount of ability that the student has, or whether in fact it is just a number.

This is a conundrum which academics have been battling with for a number of years; the situation has become ever more urgent because the number of 1st Class and 2.1 degrees has increased exponentially during the period 1994-2007, so that in some universities 60% of graduates get them.

So the topic which was investigated by the Burgess Group was whether a single summative judgment was in anyway suitable or whether that single summative judgment could be replaced by something more apt and more reflective of the student's abilities.

The Burgess Report reminds people reading it that people who have got a Third Class Honours Degree or a 2.2 are just as likely to be worthy students as those who have got the higher classifications.

So the Burgess Report recommends that there be a transcript published along with the summative figure, which shows the skills and ability that a student has put into the work; this would be much along the lines of the Bologna Agreement Diploma Transcript. I did not get out of the Burgess Report how rich the report would be (or transcript) but it would be perhaps more indicative of a student's ability than a single summative figure.

There has even be a hint in the report that things could be published about the student's social abilities, whether he contributed to sports or assisted in the students union (good, I would qualify for a first class honours on that basis).

I would recommend to my readers that they have a look at the report and there is a tag to it at the front of this article. I shall be writing more about this later.

Donald Hedges, Dip Eng Law(Open), BA(Hons)(Solent).