Drawing on insights received thus far, we’re busy interviewing staff and students at various institutions to gain their insight into feedback, assessment and their relationship. At the moment one interesting point, which counters much pedagogic literature, is the emphasis placed on assessment. Whereas this is often deemed to be a defining factor in the decisions students make and the strategies they adopt in approaching their work, for Fine Art students it seems to be less determining. Don’t get me wrong, the students seem eager to get marks which reflect the effort that has gone into their work and want to ‘do well’ but don’t tend to work toward assessment, rather seeing assessment as something that punctuates their progress but doesn’t ‘matter’, as such, until they reach stages 3 and, in Newcastle, 4 when the major proportion of their degree is decided. Even then, they don’t see the grade awarded as absolutely crucial – as one commented, you could still get a Third and win the Turner Prize. In other words, the criteria by which we assess the students are perhaps not those the wider art world uses to determine ‘value’. That raises questions, and interesting ones for us, about the models we use linking feedback/assessment with professional practice – like Open Studios.