Thank you for your email.
If you have submitted a Freedom of Information request please accept this
email as acknowledgement that your request has been received. You should
expect a response from us within 20 working days.
Data Protection & FOI
Legal Services
UCL

Dear Rebecca,

 

I am writing in response to your request for information received by UCL
on 27 January. Please accept our apologies for the fact that we were not
able to respond within 20 working days.

 

Following consultation with the UCL department of English Language and
Literature we are able to provide the following information.

 

100% attendance is required of all first-year undergraduate students,
authorised absences excepting.  The Department takes seriously its
pastoral role and undergraduate students of all years who miss seminars
and tutorials are contacted by their tutors and cases of concern are
referred to the departmental tutor.   In 2014-15 concerns were raised at
various points during the two teaching-terms at the attendance record of
three second-year students and one third-year student.  The Department
does not issue warnings.  No student was issued a learning agreement in
2014-15 as a result of low attendance.

 

Please note that we do not hold the records for 2012-13, 2013-14, and in
order to provide you with an average rate of attendance for 2014-15 for
undergraduate or postgraduate students would require a significant amount
of manual checks, for example, for the 2014-15 attendances one person
would have to cross check 34,451 instances of attendance for
undergraduates alone, made up as follows:

 

First Years:  one student would attend 80 lectures, 57 seminars, 10
tutorials = 147 instances;  83 students would attend 12,201 instances in
total.

Second Years:  one student would attend 80 lectures, up to 56 seminars, 10
tutorials = 146 instances;  87 students would attend 12,702 instances in
total.

Third years:  one student would attend 62 lectures, up to 52 seminars, 10
tutorials = 124 instances;  77 students would attend 9,548 instances in
total.

 

For postgraduate students:

MA Issues in Modern Culture:  50 seminars and at least 2 tutorials x 44
students = 2,288 instances

MA English Linguistics:  100 seminars and at least 2 tutorials x 18
students = 1836 instances

MA Shakespeare in History:  60 seminars and 7 tutorials x 11 students =
737 instances

 

Which would make a total of 39,312 instances of cross checking students
against events. We have ascertained that the work required to locate the
information would cost UCL more than £450 to comply with your request.
This figure, known as the ‘appropriate limit’, is specified by regulation
as representing the cost of one person spending 18 hours determining
whether we hold the information, and locating, retrieving and / or
extracting it. In reaching this conclusion we have also aggregated two or
more of the requests we have received from you. Section 12 of the FOI Act
enables a public authority to aggregate two or more requests from the same
applicant, for the same or similar information received within 60
consecutive working days. Having already established that section 12
applies to one of your requests submitted for attendance information
relating to a different UCL faculty the work required to respond to this
request would further exceed the appropriate limit.

 

In estimating whether complying with the request would exceed the
appropriate limit, and in accordance with Regulation 4 (3) of the Freedom
of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004, we have taken into account the costs we would reasonably
expect to incur in:

 

•           determining whether the University holds the information;

 

•           locating the information, or a document/s containing it;

 

•           retrieving the information, or a document/s containing it; 

 

•           extracting the information from a document/s containing it;
and

 

•           Collating the information.

 

We have calculated that the cost of complying with your request would be
in excess of the appropriate limit. Consequently, we are not obliged by
the Freedom of Information Act to comply with your request and will not be
processing it further. This response acts as a refusal notice under
section 17(1) of the Act for this element of your request.

 

You are free to use any information supplied for your own use, including
for non-commercial research purposes. The information may also be used for
the purposes of news reporting. However, any other type of re-use, for
example by publishing or issuing copies to the public, will require the
permission of the copyright owner.

 

If you are unhappy with our response to your request and wish to make a
complaint or request a review of our decision, please email
[1][email address]. Emails should include the words ‘Internal
Review’ in the subject and be marked For the Attention of the Vice Provost
Operations, alternatively you should write to:

 

Vice Provost Operations

University College London

1-19 Torrington Place

London WC1E 7HB

 

Please note, complaints and requests for internal review received more
than two months after the initial decision will not be handled.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may
apply directly to the Information Commissioner at the address given
below.  You should do this within two months of our final decision.

 

If you have any queries or concerns, please contact me using the details
provided in this letter and including the request reference number.

 

Further information on the Freedom of Information Act is available from
the Information Commissioner’s Office:

 

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

SK9 5AF

 

Telephone       01625 545700

[2]www.ico.org.uk

 

 

Regards,

 

 

Alex Daybank

Data Protection & FOI

Legal Services

University College London

 

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