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Changes to the University Regulations 2026-27 (and Other Reminders)

This page highlights the key changes within regulations and policies that are effective for Academic Year 2026-2027. 

Changes to the University Regulations 2026-27

Many parts of the University Regulations have been rewritten for 2026-27, and they take effect on 1 August 2026.

This page tells you what you need to know for the new session: how the regulations now fit together, the areas that most need your attention, and what has not changed. You do not need to absorb everything at once. Training on the new regulations, and other Project Compass training, is available and you can sign up for it here.

If you are a student: the regulations themselves are written for you and are linked from The new University Regulations and who they cover. If something is affecting your assessments right now, start with the Extenuating Circumstances Policy and speak to your Adviser of Studies, the Wellbeing Team, or the SRC Advice Centre.

Because the regulations have been rewritten from the ground up rather than amended, this page does not attempt to list every difference from the old text. If you often worked with the old regulations and knew them well, you should treat them as superseded and read the new documents fresh. If you were not confident in your knowledge of the old regulations, then the new regulations stand on their own and you do not need to learn the old rules to understand them.

Key changes

These changes are the most significant introduced this year:

  • all courses at all levels have the same reassessment and award of credit rules, and there are no more unique assessment rules for Honours or the Integrated Masters
  • this means that there will be limited reassessment opportunities available for Honours students (note most areas have to prepare second-attempt questions for Honours students with Extenuating Circumstances, so we do not expect this to have a significant effect on workload)
  • credit for a course is awarded when a student achieves a course grade of D or above, and credit for a whole academic session can be awarded when a student has a D or above for courses totalling two-thirds or more of the session’s credits
  • all 75% rules relating to the award of credit have been removed
  • there is a transition arrangements providing a Degree Award Guarantee in the unlikely case that a student would not get a degree due to the changes to the award of credit regulations
  • GPA calculations are now on a session-by-session basis and are based wholly on course outcomes, never on component grades
  • the undergraduate year weighting options for degree programmes are reduced to two for Honours programmes (50:50 and 25:75) and to a set of 5 for the Integrated Masters
  • course grades following reassessment are now capped, not just the grade points
  • progression and award thresholds have been standardised, with undergraduate progression and award requiring a minimum GPA of 9.0 (higher for the Integrated Masters and with variations for regulated and statutory degrees)
  • a Board of Studies may now approve an alternative form of reassessment where the original form cannot be used, provided it assesses the same intended learning outcomes at the same level and requires an equivalent standard
  • all credit-count thresholds have been removed (this includes, for example, our former rules that as well as a certain GPA, a PGT student would also need 75% of their course grades at D or above to progress to the dissertation)
  • the new Delayed Assessment Permits (DAPs) replace short extensions: students get 3 DAPs per year, and a DAP when used moves a Moodle deadline automatically by 5 working days; note that assessments handled away from Moodle need tagging so that you are notified to process the extension manually
  • the rules on Extenuating Circumstances are in the Extenuating Circumstances Policy and now include EAGR, which replaces appeals for very late EC claims, and some limited cases of self-certification
  • course and programme handbooks are no longer permitted: institution-wide and College-wide standard content replaces much of what they contained, and any necessary local information should now be text on Moodle, stated once and never repeated across different Moodles or webpages
  • local course and programme calculation spreadsheets are no longer permitted: MyGrades is the only permissible system to calculate course outcomes and an institution-wide spreadsheet will be provided which uses the new calculation rules for programme aggregation (there is a temporary exception of this rule for some clinical programmes)
  • some simpler terminology has been introduced throughout, and in particular “Schedule A to the Code of Assessment” has been renamed “Glasgow Grading Scheme 1” (GGS1), “Schedule B to the Code of Assessment” has been renamed “Glasgow Grading Scheme 2” (GGS2), the Code of Assessment for Undergraduate and Taught Postgraduate Programmes has been renamed Assessment Regulations, and we have formalised the terms “Award GPA”, “First-Attempt GPA”, “deferred assessment” and “reassessment”
  • completing and passing annual assessment training is a requirement for every academic colleague who attends a Board of Examiners and any professional services colleagues who take part in Boards as Clerks, Assessment Officers, or Reviewers. 

Further details

Information on all of these changes is available on the following pages:

What has not changed

While we have made a lot of changes, many provisions are unchanged. These include the rules on late penalties, online examinations, examination timings and durations, marking and moderation, External Examiner criteria, study abroad, visiting students, and posthumous awards. The grading scheme descriptors are unchanged apart from the scheme titles, the description of grade H, and the removal of Credit Refused.

Changes to other codes

Plagiarism and Academic Integrity Code, and Code of Student Conduct

The 2026-27 Codes include:

  • a revision relating to the use of Generative AI (§32.3)
  • clarification of the process of Further Investigation by the School where there are concerns about the originality of submitted work (§32.11)
  • clarification of the process relating to Risk Assessment and Precautionary Measures (§33.80)

See the Plagiarism and Academic Integrity Code and the Code of Student Conduct. Queries: student-conduct@glasgow.ac.uk.

Code of Procedure for Academic Appeals

The changes to the grounds of appeal, and the move of Senate appeals to online submission via the UofG Helpdesk, are described on Supporting students: Extenuating Circumstances, DAPs and EAGR. See the Code of Procedure for Academic Appeals. Senate appeals will also be moving to an online submission process (via the UofG Helpdesk). Queries: senate-appeals@glasgow.ac.uk.

Advance notice of some changes coming in 2027-28

The Assessment Regulations were revised this year for substance; next session they will be revised to match the approach of the new Degree Regulations. The Postgraduate Research regulations, consolidated this year with no change to practice, will be simplified next session. From 2027-28, all degree outcomes will be calculated centrally on MyCampus rather than on the UPAS spreadsheets.

Feedback on the regulations is invited at policy@glasgow.ac.uk

The new University Regulations and who they cover

The new University Regulations

We encourage you to read the Degree Regulations that apply to your programmes. The previous 109 degree regulation documents, totalling around 185,000 words, have been consolidated into four, with an 89% reduction in the volume of regulatory text. The regulations are shorter, written in plain English, and addressed directly to students, on the principle that the people most affected by regulations should be able to read and understand them. They are:

In addition, what was previously called the Code of Assessment for Undergraduate and Taught Postgraduate Programmes is now called the Assessment Regulations (AR). There is also a new Guide to the Assessment Regulations and a glossary of terms.

Provisions that require formal approval by Court sit in the regulations, and minor operational details will sit in programme specifications. Edits are being made centrally to programme specifications to align with the new regulations.

Six principles have been adopted to guide all future regulatory work: regulations must be navigable, discoverable, searchable, predictable, defensible, and readable. These are also the criteria against which proposed changes will be tested from now on, to stop complexity re-accumulating.

Which regulations apply to which students

The principle is unchanged from previous years:

  • the Assessment Regulations apply afresh to all students each session,
  • the Degree Regulations apply from a student’s entry to their programme, and reset to the current year’s regulations when a student enters Honours or the Integrated Masters years.

(Please remember that postgraduate taught students who were assessed in 2025-26 remain under the 2025-26 rules even where their Board of Examiners meets in 2026-27.)

Students partway through Honours, the Integrated Masters, or a part-time postgraduate taught programme are covered by transition arrangements. For this, each academic year’s GPA is calculated under the rules in force that year, and session GPAs will be aggregated at the point of award. You will not operate 2 regulatory systems side by side.

In 2026-27 every area (with the exception of some clinical programmes) will use a dedicated version of the UPAS spreadsheet, provided by Student and Academic Services, which takes a MyGrades export and aggregates degree outcomes in place of local versions. MyGrades is mandatory remains the only approved mechanism to calculate course outcomes. Maintaining and holding data in any other calculation spreadsheets, for whatever level of course or award, is not permitted. Boards of Examiners will only check, examine and approve MyGrades results online and the provided UPAS spreadsheet.

For the Degree Award Guarantee, where a continuing student’s GPA would lead to an exit award rather than their intended degree, you will refer the case to Academic Policy and Governance at next session’s Board of Examiners; you do not need to pre-screen students in advance, and the central team will check for cases where the rule changes may have caused the exit award. The check applies a single test, whether the student would have been awarded their intended degree under the previous regulations applied consistently, and if so the Clerk of Senate can instruct that the degree is awarded.

The one major action relating to the transition for continuing students is to calculate and save 2025-26 session GPAs for continuing students; that action is detailed on What you and your School need to do and full transition detail, worked examples and the 50% rule for pre-transition years are on the Transition Arrangements page.

Questions or feedback: policy@glasgow.ac.uk.

Supporting students: Extenuating Circumstances, DAPs and EAGR

Extenuating Circumstances: what is now in and out of scope

The rules are found in the Extenuating Circumstances Policy.

There is no longer a mechanism for affected performance. A student who sat an exam while unwell can ask for cancel-and-retake, where on acceptance of a claim, the exam attempt is cancelled and taken afresh.

There is no mechanism for incorporating fractional completed assessment in a degree outcome from a course without a grade: the old pro-rata calculations under the 75% rule have gone.

A student has 5 working days from an EC outcome at the Wellbeing and Evidence Check stage (“Stage 1”) to ask for it to be reviewed; the mechanism can be found in the Policy.

Problems caused by the University, such as an invigilation failure, incorrect information, or adjustments not being provided, are not an EC matter: the student contacts their School or the Wellbeing Team and the University investigates. (The one exception is serious IT failure by the University during an online exam, which the Policy treats as qualifying EC where the student contacted the IT Helpdesk at the time.) Do not advise students to submit an EC claim for University-caused problems; the system is not there to record grade changes. You should consult the Clerk of Senate (clerk-of-senate@glasgow.ac.uk) in these situations.

Delayed Assessment Permits

Short extensions have been replaced by Delayed Assessment Permits: 3 per student per academic year, each moving the deadline for one piece of coursework by 5 working days, requested in advance through the Extenuating Circumstances Portal, with no evidence needed and approval automatic. DAPs cover coursework only, not exams. Students registered with the Disability Service whose study support plan includes deadline flexibility have a higher allowance; the Portal shows each student their allowance.

Your changes to Gradebook and Moodle setup, including applying assessment tags on Moodle, are what allow DAPs to be automated. Information on the process is available on the step-by-step guide to Moodle Standardisation (see ‘Assessment Activity Tags’). You should make sure before the course starts that students are aware of the (generally very few) assessments you have which are DAP-excluded.

Remember that no deferral of a deadline may run beyond the date on which feedback is provided to the class, unless that feedback would not in any way advantage the student (in practice, work individual to the student, such as a dissertation or individual project). This date is a regulatory boundary. Note that this limit applies to moving a deadline for the same assessment. It does not prevent a deferred assessment under Extenuating Circumstances being scheduled after feedback is out, because a deferred assessment is a fresh attempt with different questions or activities.

DAPs do not carry over across academic years, and permits cannot be combined or ‘stacked’ on the same assignment. A DAP cannot be cancelled once requested, and cannot be requested after the deadline has passed. A student whose circumstances worsen after using a DAP may still claim EC for the same assessment, within 5 working days of the extended deadline (the DAP is not returned). A student who uses all 3 within a short period may be offered a supportive conversation, which can surface undisclosed difficulties.

EC After Grade Release replaces an appeals ground

The Code of Procedure for Academic Appeals has changed to match the new EC system. The third ground for appeal to College, where relevant medical or other adverse personal circumstances had for good reason not previously been presented, has been removed. From 2026-27, a student who wants circumstances considered after grades are released submits a claim through the Extenuating Circumstances system instead, known as EAGR (Extenuating Circumstances After Grade Release). The second ground has been reworded from “a failure to take account of medical or other adverse personal circumstances” to “failure to determine the appropriate academic outcome from an Extenuating Circumstances claim”.

For circumstances disclosed after grade release, the route is now an EC claim, which is more supportive and involves significantly less work for staff and students than preparing a full appeal pack. The evidence bar is deliberately higher for EAGR than for a claim made in time, because the student must show both that the circumstances would have justified a claim and a very good reason the claim could not be made earlier. Appeal remains the route where a student believes an accepted EC outcome was misapplied or a procedure was not followed. See the Code of Procedure for Academic Appeals.

Questions or feedback: policy@glasgow.ac.uk. 

Credit, GPAs and reassessment

These are the changes to how course and degree outcomes are calculated: what you need at course design time, at Boards of Examiners, and when a student asks what their grades mean.

Award of credit and compensatory credit

Award of credit rules are the rules that determine whether a course counts towards a student’s degree. They answer the question: should this course contribute to the student’s qualification or not? Across the HE sector, if a student demonstrates engagement with either the course or with the year overall, then the courses are awarded credit towards the degree. This is separate from deciding whether the student has met the requirements for award or progression: award of credit asks whether the session counts towards the student’s degree, or whether the student should instead be considered for a repeat year or an exit award.

In line with sector standards, credit is now awarded either course-by-course when a student achieves a course grade of D or above, or for all the courses in a session where a student achieves course grades of D or above for two-thirds or more of that session’s credits.

The 75% submission rule has gone, and with it the Honours-wide submission calculation and the Credit Withheld, Credit Refused, and ECW codes.

Where a student is awarded credit for a session based on two-thirds or more of a session being graded at D or above, the term “compensatory credit” is used to refer to the award of credit for a course with a grade below D. Compensatory credit does not inflate grades. If a student receives compensatory credit for a course in which they received an F1, that F1 grade still enters the GPA calculation and has consequences. The change is only about whether the course contributes to the session or not, not about upgrading the grade itself. The compensatory credit calculation happens centrally, so you do not need to operate it.

Where programmes previously had special requirements for the award of credit (that is, where the 75% rule was not appropriate, due to regulatory or statutory body requirements), then these programmes may specify the programme overall, or particular courses within it, are not eligible for compensatory credit.

Unless your programme already had special award of credit rules and Project Compass has already spoken to you about them, you do not need to make any changes in connection with compensatory credit. No programme should be adding local award of credit provisions in response to these changes. For all programmes, compensatory credit will not apply for substantial independent work (such as Masters projects or dissertations), or where a conduct penalty forbids it. An excluded course, such as a failed dissertation, goes to reassessment.

Finally, compensatory credit can also be used in the situation where students in the final year of their programme have a limited amount of assessment missing due to Extenuating Circumstances but it is not desirable to delay the student’s graduation to complete all assessment. In this instance courses which have EC outcomes and the outcomes are not going to be assessed can be recorded as ECC (Extenuating Circumstances Complete) and no part of the assessment for that course will contribute to the student’s classification. This provision can only apply up to the maximum volume of compensatory credit permitted for the session. Note that courses at ECC share the compensatory credit allowance with any failed courses.

You can find details in the Guide to the Assessment Regulations. 

All GPAs come in two forms

GPA is now calculated for each academic session, and session GPAs are then aggregated to create overall GPAs.

For sessions and overall results, ll students have both First-Attempt GPAs and Award GPAs. (Colleagues who work with PGT programmes will already be familiar with this concept.)

The Award GPA is used for progression and to determine if a student has met the minimum requirements for an award. It is calculated using the course’s Award Grade, which is derived from the best grade achieved at each assessment, taking into account any reassessment. If the Award Grade includes any reassessment grades, it is capped at the threshold grade for the programme (usually D3 for undergraduate programmes and C3 for postgraduate taught programmes).

The First-Attempt GPA is used solely for classification (1st, 2:1, etc) and endorsement (Merit/Distinction). It is calculated from the course’s First-Attempt Grades, which are derived from the grades for a student’s first attempt at all assessment, including any deferred first attempts undertaken due to ECs.

For many students who have not taken reassessment, the Award and First-Attempt GPAs will be identical. Students will be shown both GPAs for transparency.

Note that classification and endorsement criteria are now all in the Assessment Regulations (AR §16.35 to §16.39) where previously most were delegated to individual award regulations. As before, values are rounded half up at course outcome level (15.5 becomes 16, 15.4 becomes 15), and no decimals are retained at the course level or carried into later calculations. GPAs are expressed to one decimal place, rounded half up; no further rounding is then applied to that value, so 11.9 does not meet a requirement of 12.0.

Reassessment is only available where it makes a difference

Reassessment is a further attempt after an unsuccessful first attempt. The reassessment grade for an assessment, where it is higher than the original grade, will go into the Award Grade for a course and that course grade will be (rather than only the grade points, as in the past). Deferred assessment is a first attempt taken later because of approved Extenuating Circumstances.

Reassessment now exists at Honours, and one set of reassessment rules applies at every level. The loose use of the word “resit” can cause student confusion, especially where they actually have deferred assessment (given that we no longer talk about “sitting” an assessment), and so you should avoid the term.

Importantly, we now only offer reassessment where it makes a difference to a student. Remember that reassessment grades contribute to the Award GPA but never the First-Attempt GPA: reassessment can therefore only be used for a student to meet the minimum requirements for progression and award of a degree. For example, a student on an Honours programme (such as the BSc or MA) requires a minimum Award GPA of 9.0 to progress and to be awarded a degree. (The First-Attempt GPA separately determines the class of degree.) If that student fails one 20 credit course in Junior Honours, reassessment would only be appropriate for that student should the reassessment be necessary to meet that 9.0 Award GPA. Otherwise, the reassessment will make no practical difference to the student’s degree outcome: reassessment can never change the classification of a degree and the compensatory credit mechanism (see “Award of credit and compensatory credit” above) means that a limited number of courses will be awarded credit even if the course has a grade below D. A student may therefore fail a course but not be offered reassessment.

Overall, this will eliminate unnecessary or “cosmetic” reassessment, which at present puts a burden on staff and students for no reason. The mechanism is simple and operates after the Boards of Examiners which end a student’s session (usually in the spring): a student is offered reassessment in a failed course where they have both failed that course at the first attempt and their session GPA is below the progression or award threshold.

A student may also be offered reassessment where it is necessary for the student to gain a certain grade in a course to progress with their curriculum: for example, a student on MA History who failed History 1B in first year but otherwise meets the progression Award GPA of 9.0 may be offered reassessment in that course in order to meet the entry requirement for History 2A and 2B, as a D or above in History 1B is a requirement to enter the mandatory courses for the second year of their programme. This will be handled by Academic Review Panels, which replace the old Progress Committees. These panels will have Instructions issued to them by the Clerk of Senate with full information.

Note that some professional programmes have must-pass rules on all assessment set by regulatory or statutory bodies.

Degree Regulations: what to check for your programme

Progression and award thresholds have been reviewed and standardised. The ones most worth remembering:

  • undergraduate progression and award: GPA 9.0 (higher for the Integrated Masters; MEng from Year 3 onwards: GPA 14.0; MSci from Year 3 onwards: GPA 12.0)
  • entry to Honours: GPA 12.0 at first attempt in at least 40 credits of Level 2 courses in the Honours subject (reassessment grades do not count for entry unless the programme specification says otherwise)
  • postgraduate taught progression to substantial independent work: GPA 12.0 with no course below F3 (Engineering: 9.0 with no course below E3)

Note that 9.0 is now also the floor of the third class Honours band (§16.36). Because the Assessment Regulations apply afresh each session, this floor applies to everyone classified from 2026-27 onwards, including students already partway through Honours. This change is because 9.0 corresponds to our lowest pass grade, and our consultations did not consider it appropriate to award a degree to a candidate with an average grade below a pass. It is mitigated by the introduction of reassessment at Honours, which gives students an additional route to the threshold.

“Unreassessable” content should be reduced

We have historically had a range of non-replicable components for which reassessment and deferred assessment cannot be offered. These can have pedagogical rationales but are increasingly in conflict with our obligations under disability and equality legislation. Some unreassessable components confer an advantage on students who complete them, such as continuous assessment designed to build skills incrementally. There can be no justification for denying that advantage to a student who has experienced an illness or bereavement, or who has a relapsing-remitting disability. Where a component confers no advantage but is essential for demonstrating a learning outcome, the position is no better. There is no justification for designing a course in which a learning outcome cannot be demonstrated by a disabled student, or by one who has experienced challenging circumstances through no fault of their own. Accordingly, courses should always be designed with assessment components which can be rerun at later points.

It is, however, the case that our existing practice does include some low-stakes small assessments which, while not being essential to demonstrate a learning outcome, do involve some element of experiential practice or low-stakes development of skills or engagement. Sometimes these small assessments are necessarily not reassessable, either because the burden of reassessing them is too high on staff and students, or because they are highly situated in place or time (such as one-off events or limited physical availability of resources) and so a reassessment would be of limited value. Under the new regulations, work like this totalling no more than 10% of a course’s assessment by weight may be excluded from the course calculation in the event of accepted EC.

In this situation, a School may award the new grade of ECC for up to 10% of a course, which will exclude that assessment from the course grade calculation. The course will keep the credit weighting it had before, and the course grade will be based entirely on the remaining 90% or more of assessment.

The regulations currently retain the rule where, with Head of School approval (AR §16.11), up to 25% of a course can be listed as unreassessable. We aim to reduce this figure in the next round of revisions to a maximum of 10%, and Schools are advised that courses with unreassessable work should be redesigned accordingly.

Questions or feedback: policy@glasgow.ac.uk.

What you and your School need to do

Moodle, MyGrades and handbooks

Course information is being standardised so that assessment names and deadlines feed from Moodle into the EC and DAP system, MyGrades, and MyCampus. This is what allows a DAP to move a Moodle deadline automatically (within a few hours of confirmation), allows a student using accessibility software to pick the right assessment from a clean list rather than a free-text box, and allows deadline changes and reporting to work without manual intervention.

What must be in your course Moodle: students must be able to find each assessment’s dates, deadlines, format, criteria, the grading scheme used for each component (if your programme mixes GGS1 and GGS2), and any alternative reassessment forms or exclusions. State these briefly and link where the content is shared. Your component weightings should live in the course specification in the course catalogue, not on Moodle.

Nothing should be repeated across Moodles or duplicate what is presented elsewhere on the University webpages. Anything shared across courses, programmes, or the institution, such as AI guidance, regulations, or EC or wellbeing guidance, must live in one place, at School, College or institutional level, and be linked from each course Moodle, never copied. Every Moodle links automatically at the top of the page to the Policy Home and nothing there needs replicated. Only content genuinely unique to a course, such as a rubric for a specific assessment, belongs in the course Moodle itself.

The reason is accuracy and legal reasons as much as tidiness. Outdated local copies have caused significant problems, including students being shown superseded terminology and information many years out of date, and copies of the same rule drifting apart between courses. There are many changes this year, and rewriting them for your students is both a risk of drift and a waste of your time. A single linked source updates once, is correct everywhere, and is part of our obligations under legislation.

If your area has not yet completed standardisation, it must be in place before students begin the course concerned; check with your School office first, since many courses are already done. Full guidance, including the tag names, is at Moodle Standardisation Guidance and Handbook Guidance.

Checklist

Action

Who

By when

Calculate and save a frozen 2025-26 session GPA, with its programme weighting, for every continuing Honours and Integrated Masters student, saved against the student number. Include earlier years for Integrated Masters and part-time PGT students, , entering H/0 for unsubmitted work. See Transition Arrangements.

School assessment teams

during 2026-27, before the student’s award Board

Adopt the central UPAS calculation spreadsheet from Student and Academic Services and retire local versions

School assessment teams and Boards of Examiners

for all 2026-27 Boards

Publish DAP-excluded assessments in course documentation, with matching Moodle exclusion tags

course conveners with School offices

before each course starts

Complete Gradebook/MyGrades setup, including tagging off-Moodle assessments so that DAP notifications reach staff for manual processing

course conveners and School offices

before each course starts
 

Schools

before students begin each course

Update assessment instructions that mention Schedule A or B, “the Code”, Credit Withheld, Credit Refused or ECW

Schools and course teams

before semester 1

Prepare reassessment instruments for Honours courses, normally with fresh questions; prepare Board of Studies approval where an alternative form is needed

course teams and Boards of Studies

in time for the relevant reassessment period

Complete and pass annual assessment training

everyone who is involved in Board of Examiners decisions, monitored by Heads of School

in line with the training schedule

 

Questions or feedback: policy@glasgow.ac.uk.

Questions or Feedback

For questions or feedback on any of the above information, please contact: policy@glasgow.ac.uk.

Questions or feedback: policy@glasgow.ac.uk.