Six-Monthly Reviews and APE

Six-Monthly Reviews and APE

The Six-Monthly Review (6M) exercise is designed to complement the annual progression exercise, primarily to enable timely intervention and support to ensure the student and project keep on track. Its purpose is to ensure that:

  • students continue to make progress with their research topic
  • students set achievable goals for the next six months (eg conference attendance/abstracts, journal articles, training)
  • to identify any pastoral issues that may have arisen
  • to identify any new training requirement (research and/or research-related)
  • for students and/or supervisors to raise concerns/issues, with a neutral party (outwith their School) in a timely manner.  

Supervisors should, based on the information and in discussion with their student, be able to make an assessment on the student’s ability to submit their thesis on time and to a suitable standard.

The 6M review process informs (particularly where concerns have been highlighted) but does not dictate if a student progresses to the next academic year.

6M Review Outcomes:

1. Satisfactory, student is making progress and is on track to submit on time

2. Unsatisfactory -there are queries about the progress/development of the research, please see this flowchart for information and processes relating to recording of an unsatisfactory outcome

 

The Annual Progression Exercise (APE) is designed to assess the students’ knowledge and intellectual abilities including critical appraisal of key issues. The student should be able to describe their research and understand what its significance/contribution is and have a plan of work for future milestones. Please refer to this flowchart for information and processes relating to the Annual Progression Exercise. 

Its purpose is to assess:

  • the ability of the research student to deliver a doctoral level research thesis
  • to confirm the scope and suitability of the project

to assess the ‘fit’ of the supervisory team (eg technical and/or discipline expertise. The APE dictates if a student should progress into the next year of study.  For APE 1, the examiners (panel) should feel confident that the plan of work will develop into a thesis that meets doctoral standards. For APE 2, the examiners should confirm that the student continues to make appropriate progress and that the project remains focused to deliver a doctoral level thesis. It should be noted, from AY 2022/23, APE 1 exercises should be submitted to Turnitin. Guidance for supervisors on this process can be found here.

 

APE Outcomes:

1. Satisfactory: proceed to next academic year

2. Satisfactory with reservations: proceed to next academic year but actions will be recommended to address any identified weaknesses with which you must comply by an agreed date

3. Resubmission: (primarily relates to APE 1) additional work required for further review before a final decision of satisfactory or unsatisfactory returned. This must be completed within two months of the original annual progression date in order to meet requirement to conclude APE exercises within 12 months

4. Amend the supervisory team to provide additional technical/academic expertise

5. Unsatisfactory, lower award: you may not continue on the PhD pathway but you may be eligible to register for a lower award (MPhil or Master’s by Research)

6. Unsatisfactory, termination of studies: you have neither reached the standard required for a PhD programme nor a lower award. This may occur immediately after your progression exercise or following resubmission (3) of work.