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My unusual undergraduate experience – disrupted by Covid and the UCU marking boycott

  • 25 July 2024
  • By Famke Veenstra-Ashmore
  • This HEPI blog was authored by Famke Veenstra-Ashmore. Famke has recently graduated with a Master’s degree in English from the University of Cambridge and is currently undertaking an internship with HEPI.

Cancelled A levels

I was part of the cohort whose A level examinations were cancelled during the 2020 Covid lockdowns. Teacher-assessed or algorithm-determined grades were handed out in place of real marks – leading to chaotic scenes as students failed to meet university offers or universities became so oversubscribed some students had to defer their places. Fortunately, my Cambridge college decided to honour all its offers, meaning I could start my degree disruption-free as long as my predicted grades matched or surpassed the A*AA Humanities requirement. I matriculated in October 2020 with what essentially felt like a free pass, with no formal verification of my abilities having taken place. 

Unusual examinations

For my course – English – all lectures and some larger classes moved online for the first year. I barely recognised my year group beyond the college-based small-group teaching which could still take place under Covid restrictions. There were no post-lecture coffees and no chances to socialise with seminar classes beyond the awkward rectangles of Zoom breakout rooms. Library spaces had to be booked in advance and masks had to be worn. I recall refreshing the booking page for the Squire Law Library, a particularly contested building, which would book out for the next day at 9am.

Schemes of examination were also completely alien. My first and second-year exams were framed as the normal 3.5-hour tests but were to be taken online within a 24-hour window. They were open-book: we had full access to the internet, our notes, spellcheck and libraries. The essays – three per paper for my subject – felt more like speedily written pieces of coursework. The pressure of having a 24-hour window meant that most students spent entire days working on exams, taking little time to sleep or eat, and unable to socialise with others. It was argued that given we’d missed our A level exams, it would be unfair (and in the first year, impossible, due to Covid restrictions) for exams to take place in the traditional way.

However, complaints regarding this method of examination were rife. While many welcomed the convenience of open-book exams, student welfare suffered immensely, and many faculties decided to revert back to traditional exams in our cohort’s final year. The English Faculty kept our exams online, but whittled down the 24-hour window to 5 hours, which garnered resistance, given their promise not to change the format halfway through tripos. Nonetheless, I completed my undergraduate degree having never stepped foot in an exam hall.

The University and College Union marking boycott

My final year saw the complete easing of Covid restrictions. Cambridge’s usual traditions – formal dinners, unmasked graduations, even some ‘normal’ forms of examining students gradually returned. However, my cohort faced another obstacle: the 2023 University and College Union marking boycott. Though strikes were commonplace throughout my time at Cambridge, nothing so impactful occurred than this protest against pay and working conditions for academics. Across the country, members of UCU decided to boycott examining. The student body – many of whom were sympathetic to the UCU’s cause and some of whom even supported the boycott – went into exam season with no idea when their scripts would be read. Universities like Cambridge, which operate early graduations for undergraduates, had to either delay or cancel ceremonies, or in my case, hold ‘sham’ end-of-degree celebration ceremonies.

Wanting to ‘graduate’ with my peers, I chose to undergo a fake ceremony. On the day, I had no idea what my marks were, what grade I was graduating with, and whether I’d even passed my degree. I had no certificate to pose with, no sense of achievement, and no real security about my future. Though some subjects were luckier than others and were able to receive their degrees immediately, it was not until October that the English cohort received our marks, and we did not have our degrees officially conferred until November.

Future study

This delay created many problems for my peers. Master’s degree and job offers that required proof of graduation were rescinded or had to be deferred, especially for those planning to move abroad. International students who needed proof of continuation of study struggled to apply for visas. I consider myself one of the lucky few with offers to study at postgraduate level to be relatively unaffected since I had received an offer to stay at Cambridge. The English Faculty informed us, a couple of months into the summer vacation, that we’d be automatically accepted onto the course, regardless of our final marks.

Though this was a relief, it felt all too much like a repeat of my experience in 2020. Though this time I’d actually sat my exams, they were still highly modified and arguably an easier version of typical Cambridge exams. And once again, I’d been accepted onto a highly competitive course with no conclusive proof that I’d made my offer. I began my master’s degree in 2023 uncertain about my abilities – just how I’d begun my undergraduate course. Coming from a Welsh state school, imposter’s syndrome was already difficult to grapple with. Having these unfortunate circumstances – both completely out of my control – made it even harder to deal with.

All young people in education suffered through Covid restrictions, I by no means consider my year group the worst affected. The marking boycott was also deeply frustrating. Many argued it seemed cruel to inflict on a cohort who had already experienced such difficulties. I received the results of my master’s course in July (albeit a day later than advertised by the Faculty). What should have felt like a normal results day felt totally bizarre. I’d finally had a year with zero disruptions – what a novelty!

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1 comment

  1. Madeleine Barrows says:

    Thank you for writing this thoughtful piece. My daughter had a very similar experience to you at Oxford, although she was one of the luckier ones whose final exams did get marked in time for graduation. But I know the sense of imposter status that came out of the cancelled A Levels (she was also state school educated – and Oxbridge even now can be quite an intimidating environment) was a constant drag on her, as was the restricted ability in her first year to communicate with many others on her course and have that shared, exciting, educational experience that university should be about. And we have to remember you and my daughter were in some sense the luckier: students outside Oxbridge often had even less interaction with fellow students on their course during the Covid time – possibly none. These testimonies from a real-life experiment in a ‘perfect storm’ of disruption and what really matters in education practice should be gathered and feed into how we think about HE going forward. But congratulations to you both and to all that generation on coming through such a difficult time.

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