This British uni is trialling a new grade system for final year students
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Earlier this week, it was announced that The University of Birmingham had introduced a voluntary Grade Point Awards (GPA) system for current final year students.
The international GPA system, currently only used by Oxford Brookes University in the UK, will be introduced in a trial-run before further decisions are made to implement the system in following years. This year, final year undergraduates will be given the choice whether to opt-in to receiving a GPA certificate in addition to the normal degree.
Students at the university are still yet to be addressed formally by the University about the plans to implement a GPA grading system, with the rumours initially circulating by word-of-mouth before being posted on a student Facebook page with over 20,000 members.
Last Friday, the plans were confirmed by the Guild Education Officer, Adam Goldstone on his blog post where he criticised the proposed changes.
He also published an open letter to the Vice-Chancellor outlining students concerns.
The letter to the Vice-Chancellor voices concerns on the expenditure of time and money on a “fundamentally flawed” system. It further requests that students be fully informed of the changes and consequences of opting-into GPA certificate.
There are currently over 610 signatures on the letter, with only one person supporting the GPA Type system.
What is the GPA system?
The GPA system, currently widespread in the USA, aims to demonstrate a student’s level of achievement on their degree course through taking a mean average of marks achieved across all university modules, on a scale between 0.00 and 4.24.
The Guild FAQ page has created a handy table to estimate how the current marking system may be converted into Birmingham GPA.
Another user has criticised the University's blatant disregard for discussing significant changes with the student body.

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