Skip to main content

Assessment and marking criteria

There are 2 types of assessment at UAL: formative and summative.

Formative assessment may include workshops or seminars, peer observation, critique or tutor feedback.

You will not be given a grade but it will help you understand what you need to do, to perform well in the summative assessment.

Summative assessments are designed to formally assess your work.
You will be given a grade - this will be included in the calculation of your end of year result.

In the final stage of your course the grade calculation will be part of your degree classification.

Guidance for students

Assessment regulations

The following regulations apply to all taught higher education students enrolling after 1 September 2017:

Assessment guidance

Assessment Criteria

Students’ work is marked against 5 assessment criteria. Use them to help guide your learning, and ask your tutor how to make them work for you.
  • Enquiry: active learning and reflection. It’s how you explore, research and learn about your subject. Enquiry is central to all creative learning at UAL.
  • Knowledge: how you inform your work, explore diverse cultures and connections and appreciate what you do in a wider context.
  • Process: your journey of learning. It’s how you take risks and experiment. And how you keep the creative momentum going – developing ideas from start to finish.
  • Communication: telling the story of your learning and making. It’s how you share your learning with an audience, presenting and explaining your work to different people.
  • Realisation: the work you create and how this reveals what you’ve learned. It’s taking a look back and evaluating the work you’ve produced.

Find out how we make sure work is marked fairly.

UAL Assessment Criteria

Assessment criteria

Level 4 Assessment Criteria Descriptors (PDF 94KB)

Level 5 Assessment Criteria Descriptors (PDF 94KB)

Level 6 Assessment Criteria Descriptors (PDF 95KB)

Level 7 Assessment Criteria Descriptors (PDF 94KB)

Other resources

Marking and feedback

Assessment Feedback Turnaround Policy (PDF 96KB)

Inclusive Marking of Written Work Guidelines for Staff (PDF 101KB)

Anonymous Marking Policy (PDF 99KB)

Previous assessment criteria

Undergraduate Marking Criteria Matrix (PDF 124KB)

Postgraduate Marking Criteria Matrix (PDF 67KB) ‌