A UNIVERSITY let students keep studying for pharmacy degrees even though they had failed their examinations.

De Montfort University (DMU) raised the results of failing students, who moved into the next year of the course without resitting the papers, despite furious protests from lecturers and external examiners.

Staff argued that the original marks, showing a 50 per cent failure rate, were fair because students were “not up to the programme” and were often too lazy to do the work required. But senior administrators at DMU’s Leicester School of Pharmacy said, at an emergency meeting to review the grades, that jobs were at risk unless the failure rate was reduced. Internal documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show the extent of academic concern about the decision in summer 2004 to change results for first and second-year students. The pass mark on one module was lowered, in effect, to 26 per cent and on another to 21 per cent “with compensation”.

The documents, released after a year-long battle by the Times Higher Education Supplement, showed that lecturers and examiners believed that many of the students had a “poor attitude to work”.

One member of staff complained that increases to their grades were “academically indefensible”.

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