Examination and Assessment

The Department of Health Policy has standard procedures for the submission of summative coursework for all of its courses (any course with the prefix HP). When submitting your work (essay, long essay, dissertation, project etc.) please make sure you follow these guidelines:

Make sure that your work is anonymous. Your name must not appear anywhere on the coursework or the coversheet. Your five digit candidate number (available via LSE for You from mid-November) should be the only means of identifying your work. Administrative staff within the Department will not accept assessed work from you if it does not carry your candidate number.

Submit the electronic version of your coursework (Word or PDF format only) via Moodle. 

Please follow the instructions on the Moodle page for the specific course. The file name must be your five digit candidate number (e.g. 12345.doc) and NOT any of the following: your name, LSE student number, the course code, or the essay title.

If you have specific questions or queries about the general requirements for submitting your summative coursework, please contact the course administrator.

For information about a specific assignment (i.e. content, structure, format, length) students should refer to the relevant course guide, course Moodle page, or the instructions of the course administrator.

The School holds academic integrity in high regard. Under the Conditions of Registration for your programme you consented to all of your summative coursework (essays, projects, dissertations, etc) being analysed by plagiarism detection software.

The Department of Health Policy submits all summative coursework to Turnitin UK (iParadigms) for textual similarity review and the detection of plagiarism. Copies of all papers submitted to this software will be retained as source documents in the iParadigms reference database solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the use of any work by others, whether published or not, and can without proper referencing. Any quotation from the published or unpublished work of other persons, including other students, must be clearly identified by being placed inside quotation marks and a full reference to their source must be provided in the proper form.

You can submit your coursework to Turnitin yourselves, before the final submission to make sure you have not inadvertedly plagiarised someone elses work. even if you inadvertently plagiarised work, you will still be held responsible.

If you wish to submit your coursework to Turnitin yourself, make sure that you submit it ‘in draft’ on Moodle and NOT ‘for grading’. If you submit a draft, you will be able to finalise your coursework before submitting for grading. ONLY when you are sure that you want to submit your work for grading, should you choose this option. Once your work is submitted for grading, you will not be able to change it.

When you submit the electronic copy in Moodle you will be asked to confirm, by submission, that you understand the School's regulations on plagiarism and assessment. By submitting your work on Moodle you are confirming that all work contained within your work is your own, apart from properly referenced quotations.

More information

If you fail to submit by the set deadline (or extended deadline), the following penalty will apply:

Five marks out of 100 will be deducted for coursework submitted within 24 hours of the deadline and a further five marks will be deducted for each subsequent 24-hour period until the coursework is submitted. After five days, coursework will only be accepted with the permission of the Chair of the Sub-Board of Examiners.

If coursework you have submitted for assessment exceeds the set word limit, the markers will make a judgement based only on the content up to the word limit.

If your coursework exceeds the set page limit, the markers will make a judgement based only on the content up to the page limit.

You will receive feedback on any summative coursework you are required to submit as part of the assessment for individual courses (except on the final version of submitted long essays / dissertations). You will normally receive your feedback before the examination period or no more than four weeks after submission.

• In order to ensure anonymity in the marking process, under no circumstances should you contact either your lecturer or class teacher regarding the feedback you receive. 

• The Department issues feedback with an indication of a provisional mark to students for summative work.

• Summative work is marked by two internal markers and may also be reviewed by an External Examiner.

Examinations for all Department of Health Policy courses take place during the summer term in May and June. There are a few exams held outside this period and you will be informed if this applies to any of your courses.

The examination timetable will be available at the end of the Lent Term. You must be available to sit your examinations and answer any queries about your script up to the end of the Summer Term (early July). You can obtain your unique candidate number and personal examination timetable via LSE for You from the end of the Lent Term.

To help you prepare effectively for your examinations you should make yourself fully aware of the format and syllabus to be covered in the examinations. Specimen examination papers (or appropriate examination-type questions) are provided for (i) any new course or (ii) an existing course where there have been significant changes to the syllabus in the current academic year. Permitted materials are also specified early in the year.

Past papers can be access via the Library web pages. Please note that you can only access these pages on campus.

To make marking a fair process, all work that you submit for assessment must be anonymous and identifiable only by your candidate number. Names and candidate numbers are not matched until the marking process has been completed for all students on the course.

Your submission is marked by an internal marker and a sample of marks is then independently moderated to ensure equity of marking and feedback standards.

An external examiner also receives a sample of submissions and other assessed material from the top, the middle, and the bottom of the range in order to confirm that internal marking has been consistent and of appropriate standard.

The Department of Health Policy's marking framework for MSc programmes will be made available before Michaelmas Term.

You are asked to give signed consent for the Department to use your summative coursework as an example of good practice for future groups of students. Should the Department select your coursework for this purpose, please be aware that it may be published on the Department website, Moodle or Public Folders. You are under no obligation to provide consent for publication; it is entirely optional.

All essays and dissertations submitted by you for assessment is your intellectual property. This means you are free to use the content for publication elsewhere.

It is good practice to acknowledge that the content has been submitted for assessment at LSE, for example by including a note at the end of a journal article to say 'This article is based on a master's dissertation submitted to the London School of Economics and Political Science as part of the MSc (fill in name) in (fill in year)'.