Dr Mark Allinson, Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor, Teaching and Learning, University of Bristol.
Many universities have considered restructuring their academic years, from a variety of motivations. The University of Bristol introduced a new Structure of the Academic Year in 2024/25. In this brief post, I reflect on what we were hoping to achieve and what we needed to put in place.
Why did Bristol change the structure of the academic year?
In Bristol, the academic year structure had remained largely static over many years – but the university had diversified its programme portfolio and almost doubled in size. Student lifestyles and expectations had also changed. In all, previous ways of working were no longer efficient or easily manageable within the time available. Reorganising the structure of the academic year aimed to refocus the year to optimise time and space for research, improve student experience with a revised approach to assessment and reassessment timings, and to address pinch points which impacted on staff workload.
The academic year – not just dates on the calendar
Far from being a technocratic change, academic year reform centres on institutional culture and is bound up with pedagogical approaches to module and assessment design. Moving dates on the calendar also implied rethinking some processes to fit reduced timescales, and deliberately removing some of the time flexibility to achieve broader goals, While much of the focus was on education delivery, student experience improvement and, ideally, research gains, almost no part of the institution was unaffected. Human resources needed to rethink recruitment timelines, residences to reorganise rental contracts, catering to adapt their services to a different rhythm of the year, library to rethink purchasing, estates to adapt summer maintenance schedules, and sports to consider the impact on varsity leagues. This was a ‘life, the university and everything’ project which needed buy-in from the whole institution.
How the academic year structure changed in Bristol
The key gain was to complete the taught year several weeks earlier, so that resit outcomes are known much earlier (a student wellbeing win), most academics can have a longer period of concentrated research over the summer, and professional services colleagues can avoid multiple competing deadlines (resit outcomes and new starters) in September. We worked back from there. Our first semester now starts a week earlier in September, with all semester 1 assessment complete before the winter break.
This means students have a vacation free of revision and coursework, and that the second semester can begin directly after the vacation. Even allowing for a moveable spring vacation around Easter, summer exams are complete by mid-May. Over time, we are moving resits to the first half of July. We were able to find efficiencies in exam timetabling and we applied standard definitions to some weeks of the year which schools had used variably (e.g. floating reading and revision weeks are now fixed consolidation and assessment preparation weeks).
Crossover with other pedagogical reforms
The new structure of the academic year depends on other work in education. We simultaneously introduced a simplification project to streamline our programme structures and collaborated with schools in curriculum workshops to address over-assessment and over-teaching. Our key message was to avoid lift and shift: every programme needed to reconsider how its curricula would fit the new structures, notably to reflect the earlier mid-year assessment deadlines.
First results
After an uncomfortable transition summer – ending the old system and moving quickly into the new structure with its earlier start – initial impressions have been good. Students were overwhelmingly supportive of the clear winter break. Though some found the shorter lead-in to first semester assessments challenging, student results were generally at and often slightly improved on the previous year’s levels. Meanwhile, cases of exceptional circumstances, extension requests and missed assessments were down overall (linked also to reforms in these areas). Very few students (1-2%) made any mention of the new structure of the academic year in NSS, but scores for organisation improved.
Staff found that marking deadlines soon after Christmas were tight (we have made changes for the second year of the new structure to address this), and some areas found they needed to consider further curricular changes to match the new dates. We heard from professional services colleagues that they had been able to take leave more easily over the less pressured summer.
Behind the scenes – and work in progress
Saving weeks in the new structure demanded careful thought about pedagogy, but also an ongoing communications push and considerable work on underpinning processes. For instance, the earlier start to the year impacted admissions/registration timelines. It required additional support to secure timely arrivals of international students through complex visa and CAS (confirmation of acceptance for studies) arrangements.
The tighter timelines often required harmonisation of centrally supported processes across the university. This has contributed to a less distributed and more efficient model overall, with greater consistency of student experience. Efficient exam boards operation is a significant dependency for a tighter academic year structure. The change has prompted a major redesign to remove duplication of work from current systems. At the time of writing, this is well advanced, and should enable us to bring our resit period, and our graduations, earlier in the coming years. We have also reflected that our year-long PGT programmes still require considerable work for many academics over the summer. The change has therefore prompted creative thought about pedagogical and assessment approaches.
Worth it?
It is early days, but the initial indications are positive. The changes have had a catalyst effect across the university, uncovering issues which had needed attention over years and providing a context for further change. Evaluation will need to continue over the next year or two, particularly to ensure that we realise and embed the potential benefits to research capacity alongside the improvements we are already seeing in student experience.