Cambridge students urge university to stop making their exam results public

Students can see each other’s final class marks when they are published each year outside Senate House. Photograph: Alamy

Students at the University of Cambridge have started a petition against the university’s tradition of publicly displaying their end-of-year exam results.

More than 700 students had signed it on Wednesday morning, three days after it was launched. Under the current system, students receive their class marks privately online, before they are published on noticeboards outside Senate Houseand in university publications.

The petition, set up by the student campaign group Our Grade, Our Choice, calls on the university to give students a clear way to opt out of appearing on public class lists.

Students who signed the petition are concerned that the public distribution of results ignores students’ welfare and right to privacy. They say the current practice “promotes a culture of grade shaming”, that those with mental health issues may not want to be included, and that it could “trigger an episode” in vulnerable individuals.

The campaigners also say the system may harm “those who do not wish to be identified by the name the university has on record, particularly within the trans community”.

Nadia Ayed, 21, a psychology student at Cambridge who signed the petition, says the practice fosters a competitive attitude towards education. “Many individuals will find it distressing, and it can induce negative psychological effects, such as lower self-esteem, shame and anxiety, which hugely affect wellbeing.”

Ayed says the system also encourages competitiveness, “with people not wanting to share their notes, and an ‘in it to win it’ attitude among students”.

Louis Reynolds, 23, who is studying for an MPhil in sociology at Cambridge, says: “I had my grades published in public last year and found the whole experience both bizarre and archaic. The examiners are not allowed to know our names, so why should the general public?

“People take photos of the grades and post them all across social media and tag people in them – this is the epitome of grade shaming, irrelevant of the actual marks that somebody received and their thoughts on them.”

Helen Hoogewerf-McComb, president of Cambridge University’s student union (CUSU), says: “While the university does have a right to publish examination results without gaining students’ prior consent, it also has a duty to provide an appropriate mechanism for students to opt out, particularly where publication may cause distress or harm.”

In the past, Cambridge students’ results would be publicly displayed before they received them privately, but this was changed in 2010.

The University of Oxford stopped making exam results public in October 2009 because around 40% of students had previously opted out of having their names published on public exam results lists through the Data Protection Act, according to a university spokeswoman.

A spokesman for the University of Cambridge says: “This is an age-old tradition. If any student feels uncomfortable and wants their name to not be published they can ask their senior tutor for exemption.”