Paul Glynn and Sinéad Baker
Proposals approved by the university’s Undergraduate Studies Committee, Central Scholarship Committee and University Council have clarified college proposals to introduce a “general paper” to the Foundation Scholarship examination.
A minimum of 25 per cent of the exam will be awarded from work completed in a general paper. Topics examined in the general paper will be relevant to a student’s discipline, but beyond the set curriculum. It has also been proposed that, in order to be eligible, students must not receive below 65 per cent in any paper.
Final approval from the College Board on these proposals is pending.
Two documents issued to the university’s Council and Board, dated February 3rd and 17th respectively, outline the progress the Undergraduate Studies Committee and Central Scholarship Committee have made in coordinating the introduction of the General Paper to the Scholarship examination for the academic year 2015/16. In order to ensure that 25 per cent of the exam is “general”, programmes may set a full general paper or may set a compulsory general section/ sections on at least one paper.
All programmes have confirmed their plans for implementing the general paper. Furthermore, the Central Scholarship Committee has proposed that no further changes be made to the structure of the exams during the next few years “so as to be able to assess properly the impact of the new policy”.
Plans to introduce a general paper to the Foundation Scholarship examination were originally proposed in 2014 by the then-Senior Lecturer, Dr Patrick Geoghegan. The original proposal was for students to answer several essay-type questions in a dedicated exam that were not linked to any single subject. At their last meetings of the 2013/14 academic year, Council and Board approved a policy on scholarship, requiring that in 2014/15 all courses much set on paper that is not on the set curriculum, a “subject specific general paper”.
The incumbent Senior Lecturer, Gillian Martin, however, advised that the general paper should examine material related to the candidate’s discipline, but not on the set curriculum. While originally the proposal was to introduce a general paper for the academic year 2014/15, the need for departmental consultation and revisions to the College Calendar meant these plans were delayed.
Subsequent discussions, which took place during Michaelmas Term 2014 and the first weeks of Hilary Term 2015, revealed a number of complications to the implementation of a general paper. For example, there would be a difficulty in setting such a paper for students in multi-school programmes and TSM courses with little or no potential for subject matter overlap.
Similarly, there was concern about the fact that, according to the documents, “papers are frequently shared across multiple programmes, which offer differing levels of choice or no choice at all in terms of which papers students take”, as well as fitting the general paper into the current regulations, which requires four examination papers and at most nine hours of examination over a maximum of five days. The documents also note the existence of general papers already in courses such as History.
As a result of these factors, the groups involved in the discussion have modified their original one-paper proposal, which would have seen everyone sit the same paper, regardless of discipline. Now, the exams will have “a minimum of 25% general, in line with the requirement that one of three or four papers should be based on material that is discipline related, but goes beyond the set curriculum”.
Also proposed is a change to the marks required to be successful in the exams.On October 10th, 2014 the Central Scholarship Committee unanimously agreed that in order to be eligible for scholarship, students much achieve an overall first in the exams and must achieve a majority of first class marks with the rest of the papers achieving 65 per cent or above. Hence, in order to be eligible, a student cannot receive less than 65 per cent on any paper in the examinations.
These proposals were intended at least in part to reduce the overall number of scholars as a cost-saving exercise and to ensure greater consistency across the faculties and disciplines.
Photo by Sergey Alifanov for The University Times
