University Module Statistics UK: The Numbers Nobody Publishes

Ask a university for its overall degree outcome statistics and you'll get an answer within minutes — it's on their website. Ask for the same statistics broken down by module, and the conversation changes completely.

That gap is the whole story of this post.

The statistics that exist, module by module

Every module that runs an assessed cohort generates a specific, recorded set of statistics at exam board stage:

• First-rate — the share of the cohort scoring 70%+
• Pass/fail rate
• Mean and median mark
• Standard deviation (how tight or spread the marks are)
• Cohort size
• Year-on-year trend, if the module has run multiple times

None of this is exotic. It's standard exam-board reporting. What's unusual is how rarely it reaches students.

Why module-level statistics stay buried

Universities report outcomes at the level that's convenient for regulation and marketing: degree classification, split by course. Module-level statistics don't feature in any external reporting requirement (Discover Uni doesn't ask for them), so there's no institutional incentive to compile and publish them.

There's also a quieter reason. Module-level statistics expose variance that degree-level averages smooth over. Two modules on the same course can have wildly different first-rates, and once students can see that, the pressure to justify grading consistency across a department increases. Aggregation hides that pressure; disaggregation reveals it.

What FOI-sourced data shows

We've filed FOI requests to UK universities for exactly this — module-level distributions, not degree-level summaries. The pattern across responses is consistent: variance between modules on the same course is often larger than variance between different universities on the same course.

That's a genuinely surprising finding, and it's the reason we built our FOI methodology page to document exactly how the requests are filed, what's disclosed, and what universities can lawfully withhold under s.40 and s.38 exemptions.

A banded view of module statistics

Public pages never show raw percentages — see our privacy threshold for the cohort-size cutoff we apply. Banded, the picture looks like this:

Statistic	Low band	Mid band	High band
First-rate	Below subject average	Around subject average	Well above subject average
Fail rate	Elevated	Typical	Minimal
Cohort size	Small (higher noise)	Medium	Large (stable signal)

This banding exists specifically so we can share signal without breaching individual privacy — no student's mark is ever identifiable from a banded descriptor.

Using module statistics to choose better

If you're deciding between optional modules, module statistics are the difference between an evidence-based choice and a guess based on your mate's opinion. Combine them with the practical decision framework in how to choose university modules and you've got a genuinely rigorous process, not folklore.

FAQ

Are university module statistics public in the UK?

Not proactively. Universities are legally required to disclose them on request under the Freedom of Information Act, but very few publish them without being asked.

How can I get module statistics for my own course?

File an FOI request to your university's information governance office, ask your module convenor directly, or access GradeHack's existing FOI-sourced dataset for banded signals across your subject.

Do module statistics vary a lot within one course?

Often more than they vary between universities on the same course — which is why picking modules by data, not vibes, matters so much.