Leicester school of pharmacy still on probation
Probationary status of the MPharm course at De Montfort University has not been rescinded because the university has not yet fully complied with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's five-point action plan.
The Society’s education committee met on 4 May and decided that
the university should remain on probation until students whose marks
were raised without the knowledge or agreement of external examiners — a
total of 40 students — have graduated.
The Society confirmed that the requirement for each student whose marks
had been raised to have a personal action plan had not been met by the
university at the time of its visit. Two of the 40 students affected
had not yet started a plan, it said.
“Our requirement was clear and explicit that the students had to
show how they had met every single learning outcome through extra work
and
extra examinations, and through constant monitoring, and we will not
rescind probation until we have evidence — that we can verify through
a visit — that all students have met all of the learning outcomes,” said
Damian Day, head of accreditation at the Society.
The education committee agreed to review the situation through a further
accreditation visit in one year’s time, when the affected students
are due to graduate.
A spokesman for De Montfort university said: “The Leicester school
of pharmacy has engaged vigorously with a five-point action plan required
by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to rescind the current probationary
status and has already instituted the necessary changes. The Society
wishes to monitor these changes until all the affected students have
graduated.
“Although the education committee felt that the university had
not yet fully complied with their requirements we feel that these are
easily
achievable within the time frame set and have absolute confidence that
probationary status will be rescinded well in advance of the graduation
of those students affected in 2004.”
The spokesman added that the issue referred to in 2004 was a single and
isolated event due to a particular set of circumstances that could not
possibly be repeated and does not represent any culture of reducing standards
as had been implied in the media.
When asked to clarify this point, the spokesman said: “There were
a limited number of details relating to processes for first-year assessments
which have been dealt with.”
Sandy Florence, former dean of the School of Pharmacy, University of
London, said he would expect an average of 20 per cent of students to
fail one or more subjects and for those students to resit and the majority
to recover. But he admitted that this would vary year on year. “In
my experience, most students fail because they have not put the work
in, not because of a lack of ability,” he commented.
News feature p561 |
The
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