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The new University Regulations and who they cover

Part of Key changes to the University Regulations for 2026-27.

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  (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.

We recommend you now read: Supporting students: Extenuating Circumstances, DAPs and EAGR

 

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