This blog is being posted a little late.  It was not written on the date to which it refers, because I spent that evening hosting the dinner for our new international students - and didn't get home until after midnight.  I blogged about that event last year (Monday 20 September 2010), and it remains one of the absolute high spots of my year - the bringing together of people of very different backgrounds from all around the world for the purpose of education.  Instead I will write about something else from Friday.

This morning I had a phone conversation with my opposite number at another Russell Group university, located in London.  She is not able to make it to our regular all-Russell Group meeting in Glasgow in two weeks time. (Three of the four London Russell Group members have female PVCs or equivalent for Learning and Teaching, so I've not given watertight identification here.)  Our discussion was around the possibility of changing the degree classification system and moving to a grade point average.  This is omething that I have talked about before, with a group of seven universities taking the lead and then going public with the idea to the Times Higher a couple of months ago.

What has happened since is the recognition that a lot of other universities are actively considering going in the same direction, and would welcome the chance to join our group.  My view is that we should broaden our discussions, since having a larger number of universities on board will give the project greater purchase with students, employers and other stakeholders.  But the danger of enlarging the discussions is that we might get fissiparous tendencies.  We might end up discussing a number of variants of a simple scheme and ultimately slow everything down.  There is something to be said for a small group to make its stand and then see who follows.

One aspect of the discussion that I welcome is the possibility of moving back to something akin to the 16 point marking scale that we operated as a university for some time.  It is interesting to reflect that when we abolished the system and went back to the 0-100 scale, a number of other universities continued to move towards a more limited mark scheme based on 16 or 20 points.  It will be very easy for them to convert to a system based around A+, A, A-, B+, B, B- and so on.  The 16 point scale was very appropriate for large areas of the university, and I have difficulties in understanding why those parts of the university that didn't like it are mirrored by similar departments elsewhere who have no problems with it.  It may be that we will have to look into such issues in some detail in the next year or two if we are to move away from our current undifferenitatied system in which the vast bulk of stduents gets an Upper Second or a First towards something that produces a more nuanced eflection of individual overall performance.