re-siting first year because of a failed SSU and student finance support

Sorry to hear of your situation. If this is the first degree that you’ve had student finance for, then they will fund your full degree plus one additional year. So your funding shouldn’t be a problem if you need to repeat the year.

Whilst having a new examiner for the repeat assignment might seem unfair, in some ways at least it means that a separate independent person has assessed it, which hopefully adds some objectivity. Was there a clear mark scheme and brief for your assignment, and do you feel you got adequate feedback to help you improve and understand where you’d gone wrong the first time?

You are correct that appeals can be difficult and generally require you to be able to prove either mitigating circs that you couldn’t have presented to the board before the exam board, OR a failure to follow due process / an error such as a page of an exam paper missing. Normally, challenging an academic grade awarded isn’t allowed. But you can try. Best wishes with it.

Sorry to hear that. It's really **** that they have brought you to this point over an essay which I'm assuming was probably a short assignment. Subjective applies to all other exams including OSCE's and professional judgement so you have done really well to pass everything else where things could have gone a lot worse than this. Your best bet is to put your appeal together on the basis of procedural change - they replaced your usual examiner without informing you in advance, and perhaps this new examiner was more harsh on your essay than the first person would have been. Get some more information on the previous complaints that have been made about the SSU. If other people have been failed regularly on the same assignments in the past, see if you can challenge why this has happened consistently and why the concerns were not addressed. It sounds to me that your institution is pushing for you to repeat the year over a small assignment because they do not have enough spaces in your current year group. This is common practise at all medical schools across the UK. With the current year group oversubscribed and more people passing the big exams than they expected to - they find a way to engineer failure on small assignments for a small number of students so that they can force you to repeat the year unfairly with no repercussions on them. Do not let them push you into repeating everything all over again without fighting it first. Get the BMA involved, get them to represent you at any meetings you have with your medical school and treat every session like a court hearing. I know people who have been deceived at this point because their medical school staff said these would be informal friendly chats when in fact they turned out to be more like prosecutions with a scribe in the corner writing down all the accusations. Take a BMA rep with you every time.

Such is the status quo at UK medical schools that you must pass every module or repeat everything you've passed which I think is cruelty. They think even a module that is worth for example 0.01% of your whole year warrants you doing everything again. Absolutely not. You are right that writing a good report does not make you a better doctor - well repeating things a second time that you've already passed once does not make you a better doctor either. It's illogical and wrong but we must carry on nonetheless. I also wonder why in the world they require you to do an OSCE in first year unless they use the term OSCE interchangeably with anatomy stations?

the main point of SSUs are so we can look up and read new relevant scientific information. I mentioned to my SSU lead that examining our ability to write a report doesn't equate to how well we understand the literature.

I agree that marking isn't just based upon making a reasonable conclusion, but more about how you made the conclusion you did. The parallels with clinical life would be that for patients you have to draw upon multiple sources and generate a sensible management plan which is a higher order skill. Furthermore I agree writing and reading are different skills, but writing a good paper will have a solid understanding of the literature as a pre-requisite.

I do also agree that there are flaws, for example giving marks for the referencing is often just a test of obedience. However all tests have flaws, for example if MCQs were a perfect test it would presuppose that for every clinical decision five answers - including one correct one - will be presented to you. I also agree that writing a good paper isn't the only measure of how well someone has understood the literature - but it is a good one.

Ultimately my own personal view is that as all tests are flawed the question is often of picking the 'least bad' and using a variety of methods to ensure you aren't favouring a certain type of candidate as the 'true' best candidate will probably perform well across all of them.

You make alot of good points.

Would you agree that they hold more academic weight than they should? it's arguably the least important part of the course yet you get penalised heavily for it. Even my tutor said its useless unless you're interested in research, which most medics aren't, including myself. Students have been complaining about it for what seems like ages but nothing has changed. It makes sense to make them formative or make them optional (however that might be impractical). It seems so petty from the medical school to halt my progression because of it. I know alot of established consultants in their respective fields who never authored a single paper. As you know, you can put your name onto a paper without actually authoring it. Hence, the skill isn't a necessity to becoming a good doctor.

The result is that I have to waste another year of my life and get 18K more in debt because one staff member, who never treated a patient in his life, was convinced that my work was worth a 10 instead of an 11. I'm going to learn content I've already learned and sit exams I've already sat. Is it rational? absolutely not. Is it worth it? absolutely not. Is it a waste? YES. And I have absolutely ZERO power to do anything about it.

It's more confusing when the university has offered 10K and free accommodation to my friend who was on a gap year to defer another year, assuming to clear up spaces. Making me resit the year takes away someone else's spot who's fully capable and replaces it with someone who's already familiar with all the content. It's just a massive waste and an efficient way to allocate resources.

Personally, yes I do think that essays are overused as a method of assessment. Were it me in charge I might not go as far as removing them from all summative assessment but I would tone that part down in terms of weighting and increase the clinical reasoning (note not factual recall).

I feel a lot of the rest of the post has nothing to do with assessment though.