Change to student grading planned

Students will no longer be awarded traditional university degrees divided into first, second and third-class honours under newly published plans.

Instead, universities will issue graduates with a detailed transcript, breaking down marks for each unit and listing the wider skills that students have mastered.

The new Higher Education Achievement Report (Hear) could show overall percentage scores and is intended to become the main method for grading all UK students by 2010.

A three-year review produced for vice-chancellors recommended that the Hear would run alongside the existing 200-year-old honours classifications in the first few years.

But the aim is for the system of sorting graduates into firsts, 2:1s, 2:2s and thirds to become "obsolete" and be "replaced" with more detailed information.

Leicester University vice-chancellor Professor Bob Burgess, who led the review group, said: "The continued use of overall judgments such as upper second and lower second actively inhibits the use of wider information about students. Graduates deserve more than simply a single number to sum up their academic work when they leave university."

Prof Burgess's report condemned the widely held view that it is "essential" for students to achieve at least a 2:1 to get a good job."The obsession with the top two degree classes is unhealthy and damaging," the report said.

The proposed Hear is expected to be about two pages long. If adopted after trials over the next two years, it would contain the same core details about a student wherever they were studying in the UK.

The Burgess Report was commissioned by universities themselves, independently of the Government. The decision on whether to move down the route proposed by the report lies with individual universities.

Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell backed the planned new Hear document but warned he did not want degree classifications to disappear. He said: "I wish to be clear that I believe progress can best be made by building on the current system, and certainly not by replacing degree classifications."