The baseline level is the II.1: a II.1 piece of work shows a solid and competent grasp of the course material. The student has been able to get most things right, but without very clear evidence of additional insight. They may be slow to see cross-connections between different course elements, or to extrapolate knowledge and experience to new situations.

A first class piece of work shows a good grasp of the material, with some clear evidence of going beyond the II.1 level by showing initiative,insight, originality, creativity, ability to generalise and extrapolate to new situations.  Naturally, this may manifest itself differently depending on the context: mathematical material requires a different kind of ‘insight’ than experimental work or essay-based descriptive work.

A II.2 piece of work falls below the II.1 standard: the student can cover most of the material, but has gaps in their understanding which lead to incomplete or partially incorrect solutions, not a complete understanding of any assumptions applied, and to missing important details when interpreting experimental results or qualitative material.

Third-class work reveals major gaps in the student’s understanding, but shows just enough competence to contribute to an undergraduate degree with honours.  However, this standard, if continued across the whole body of work,  is not acceptable at Masters level.