To all Foundation Students
It has been brought to my attention that marked work in a number of modules is overdue in being returned to you.  Our policy and goal is clear - to return marked work to you within four weeks for work submitted by the deadline.  When work is delayed for reasons that we know you will understand, particularly through illness, we ought to inform you so that
you know why a delay has occurred and when you can expect your work back.  It is not acceptable that work is returned late and that you don't know why.  Dave Allen will be addressing this on Friday , establishing where the problems are and how they will be resolved.  He will be in communication with those who are affected after this.  I trust that you will bear with us when the problems are outside our control but I apologise when we have not done what we ought or have not informed you of delay.  I hope we can get this resolved quickly.

For the longer term I would like us to a wider discussion about some options.  For example:

• Earlier deadlines would help get work back sooner in the cycle, but we know from feedback that students do not like submitting work before the end of a module.
• We get high praise from external examiners about the quantity and quality of written feedback, but this adds greatly to the time taken to mark work: would you prefer quicker returns or more detailed comments?
• We think that we can speed up the process if work is submitted through Moodle; but this makes it difficult to comment in detail on the text and may not be attractive to those who are less confident about electronic submission.

These issues are important and we will be considering at Programme Groups how we can have this wider consultation so that Academic Board can review our practices.  In the meantime I will be working with colleagues to address the issues before us.