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Durham University staff and students should instead refer to the Learning and Teaching Handbook here.

The information on this page is reviewed every three months.</sup>

Extract from Durham University's Learning & Teaching Handbook

6.2.5: Penalties for the Late Submission of Assessed Work

1. University-wide guidance on the penalties to be applied in the case of students submitting assessed work late is outlined below (note: this policy covers assessed coursework and comparable assessments, it does not extend to examinations and similar short-term timed assessments):

2. Students are required to submit work before the deadline for submission. Deadlines should be within the working day, so that students can contact the department if they have problems. Students must be informed in writing of the deadline for a given piece of work. This may be on departmental notice boards, by email, through DUO, and/or in programme/module handbooks. It is also good practice to notify students in writing on an individual basis where the department/school deems this to be possible and appropriate.

3. Where a department/school requires students to submit work in both hard copy and electronic formats, the work must be submitted in both formats before the deadline for submission, although departments/schools may specify different deadlines for each of the two formats. Where departments require an electronic copy of work for the purposes of checking for originality work will not be assessed until such time as this is received. University policy and procedure with respect to student requests for extensions to deadlines for summatively assessed work is detailed in section 6.2.6 of the Learning and Teaching Handbook. Normally the only grounds on which an extension will be granted are where circumstances beyond the control of the student have prevented submission.

4. If an extension is granted then the new deadline must be made clear to the student, in writing, and the procedures with regard to meeting the new deadline should be those outlined in this policy statement.

5. If a student who has not been granted an extension fails to submit a piece of summative assessed work (including a dissertation) by the due deadline the following policy and procedure will apply:

6. Students who submit their summative assessed work late but within five working days[1] of the deadline shall be penalised by having the mark for that work capped at the module pass mark (note: this rule does not apply in the case of assessed work submitted late for a resit assessment - where work is already capped at the pass mark. Any resit work submitted late will not be marked, and a mark of zero will be recorded instead). The work will be marked and feedback supplied. The mark that would have been awarded to the student had the penalty not been applied should be indicated to the student.

7. Summative assessed work submitted more than five working days after the deadline will not be marked and a mark of zero will be recorded.

8. In the event that a department has specified different deadlines for electronic and hard copy formats of the same piece of summative assessed work, the penalty in 6 above will apply to the first deadline.

[1] a working day is Monday to Friday and excludes bank holidays and days which the University is officially closed.