A report into the data errors that allowed five final-year students from the School of Medicine to be wrongly passed or failed last summer has strongly criticised the School’s handling of assessments.

The investigation panel, led by Professor David Miers from Cardiff Law School, concluded that there had been ‘serious failings in the governance and management of data processing’ that required ‘urgent corrective action’ if similar mistakes are to be avoided this year.

The School of Medicine has already announced a number of changes following the incidents last summer.

Over a third – 137 – of the roughly 350 students who graduated last year from the MBBCh course had errors in their assessment data relating to an exam on the Knowledge and Understanding module. As a result, four students were incorrectly told they had passed the year, while one was wrongly told they had failed. Three other students later had their degree classifications raised.

This led to four students being allowed to start work in hospitals without having reached the required standard. They are now re-taking their final year.

As well as these mistakes, 70 fourth-year students taking the child health OSCE exam were given the wrong results. One was initially told they had failed the year, but was later allowed to progress.

The errors were all introduced in the administration stage when the assessment data was copied into spreadsheets, and are not in any way related to the quality of teaching in the School. In the Knowledge and Understanding exam, a block of results in the wrong order were copied into the spreadsheet, meaning the results and candidate numbers did not match up.

In the child health OSCE exam, the results from 2007/08’s students were mistakenly copied and awarded to last year’s students.

The 70-report highlighted the lack of checking of the data before results were given out as having contributed to the errors.

Professor Paul Morgan, Dean of Medicine at the University, apologised to the students affected and said that the School of Medicine was doing all it could to prevent a repeat of the incident.

Speaking to gair rhydd last week, he said: “The key thing for us is making sure the database for capturing assessments and where the errors occurred is sorted out. That’s something we’ve worked very hard on and we’re very confident we can deliver.

“Students can have confidence that their marks will be correctly handled. We now have as tight a ship as it is possible to have.

“I’m very happy with the changes that have been made, and I think we’re in a much better place than we were a year ago.”

However he admitted that the mistakes were likely to have an impact on the results of next year’s National Student Survey, which asks final-years to rate various aspects of their course. Last year only 68% of Medicine students were satisfied with the course – the third-lowest in the UK – and just 46% felt their assessment arrangements and marking had been fair.

“It’s bound to have an effect, but hopefully it won’t be as negative as it otherwise might be if we weren’t so clearly dealing with it,” he said.

“We have been working very hard to improve the NSS results and to really engage the students and to show that we’re doing things for them. Then something like this comes along and you think all the work might have been in vain.

“But,” added Professor Morgan, who took up the post last April, “we’ve been very transparent in what we’ve been doing, and I hope they’ll be able to see this in the light of our actions as well as the incident.”

The measures already introduced by the School of Medicine include moving the two final-year written exams forward six weeks to May to allow for more time to process the data. Last year staff had only around three to four days to process data for all final-year students.

Two new positions have also been created with responsibility for assessments and the handling of their data. An Assessment Data Manager will oversee the capture, storage, and reporting of assessment data, while an academic Psychometrician will ‘analys[e] assessment data and ensur[e] that examinations and other assessment activities in the School are fair and robust’.

A monitoring group set up by the University will report to the University’s Awards and Progress Committee and the Academic Quality and Assurance Committee on the progress of the implementation of the recommendations. The General Medical Council will also be informed of developments.

Healthcare Student Integration Officer Jack Navein said: “I think every med student’s heart went out to the four students involved – it must have been a horrible experience.

“We all feel the medical school have been incredibly open throughout the process and having worked very closely with them on the measures put in place, I’m extremely confident that we will not see a repeat of such incidents in future.”

In a statement, a University spokesperson said: “The investigation panel, which included external membership, has made a series of recommendations designed to ensure absolute confidence in the handling and publication of results data by the School of Medicine.

“The recommendations have been fully accepted by the University and the School and a detailed planning process for the required action is now being progressed as a matter of urgency.”

The spokesperson added that the actions arising from the recommendations will be implemented in full before the end of the academic year.

A General Medical Council spokesperson said that the University had “significant progress to make to improve the way that student assessment data is managed in the School of Medicine”.

“We have requested a detailed action plan from Cardiff University and we will need to be assured that, through robust implementation of the plan, there will be no repetition of these errors which had extremely serious consequences for the students involved,” they said.

Academic Affairs Officer Michaela Neild said: “The Union is obviously concerned with the academic welfare of medical students and the reputation of their degrees. As a member of University Council, both the President and I have copies of the report and have been following the progress of the review panel.

“The evidence given by students to the group has been highly commended and crucial to the report.”