FOI2016/081
I write with a request for information:
Information for each of the following undergraduate programmes provided by the University:
(i) Law/ legal knowledge subjects taught
(ii) History and History joint subjects (e.g. history and politics)
(a)The average mark attained in each second year module in the academic years 2008/09, 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/2014, 2014/2015
(b)The average overall mark attained by students at the end of their second year of studies in the academic years 2008/09, 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/2014, 2014/2015
Note – this response does not include a response for question (b) as SOAS does not store an overall mark for each year.
Data source:
Data were taken from the SOAS student record system UNIT-e using a query run on 27/04/16.
Parameters:
(i)Academic Years
Enrolments from the academic years 2008/09, 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/2014, 2014/2015were included. In the output these are displayed using SOAS Session references which are: A08/09, A09/10, A10/11, A11/12, A12/13,A13/14 and A14/15.
(ii)Second year
Only module results for students enrolled on year 2 of their programme in one of the years specified above were included. This includes students who repeated year 2 in the period. It should be noted that some students are on a language year abroad in year 2 in which case their modules are not included as individual marks are not held on the SOAS student record system. This is particularly the case for languages students taking either Chinese or Korean.
(iii)Subject
Data have been provided for programmes defined as either Law or History. This determination was made using the JACS subject code(s) for the programmes. Programmes are classified as Law where they are wholly/partially allocated to JACS codes beginning M, e.g. M100 Law. Programmes are classified as History where they are wholly/partially allocated to JCAS codes beginning V, e.g. V100 History. JACS codes beginning V6, which relate to Study of Religions, were excluded. It should be noted that in some cases programmes appear in both lists, e.g. History and Law. History of Art and History of Art and Archaeology were included. It should also be noted that the LLb programme was named "Law" prior to 2013/14
(iv)Average Mark
The average mark for year 2 modules was calculated using a mean average of the marks of all students in the population for the module in the specified session. Average was not weighted to take account of the credit value of the module. Where no mark was entered, the mark was assumed to be 0 as these students had failed, usually without submitting. These values were included in the average.
As mentioned above, SOAS does not store an overall mark for individual years of study so no data have been provided for part (b) of the request.
(v)Withdrawal
Students who withdrew from the year of programme without sitting modules were excluded from the population and therefore from the calculation of average mark.
(vi)Auditing
Modules being taken on an auditing basis were excluded.
Rounding strategy
Due to concerns over releasing personal data under the Data Protection act and the statistical validity of calculating an average from a very small sample size, modules taken by less than 5 students in the specified session have been suppressed. Similarly, modules which were offered in the specified year but were not studied by any students are not represented.
Data
As the data were requested in Excel a separate output file called 'FOI2016_083_response' will be provided with this document.
SOAS, University of London
28April 2016
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