FAQs for students

Following updated UK government guidance to higher education providers in England LSE has assessed what further action to take to keep our School community safe and well.

For the remainder of the 2020/21 academic year, all compulsory teaching, learning and assessments, including those taking place in Summer Term 2021, will be delivered online.

This follows a careful review of the latest government guidance about national restrictions in England,  assessment of our unique position at LSE, and, most importantly, our community’s safety and wellbeing.

By shifting our mode of delivery, we will be able to focus our efforts on providing the best teaching and education experience possible - leaving open the opportunity for in-person engagement as soon as it is deemed safe to do so.

We will continue to operate a limited opening of campus. Currently, you can access  the Library (every day 8am-10pm), learning spaces in the Centre Building (every day 8am-10pm), and the Beveridge Café for takeaway (Monday to Friday, 8.30am-6.30pm). These spaces will remain open, as long as it is safe to do so and in line with government guidance.

However, anyone coming to campus must get tested twice a week, and have received a recent negative test before accessing facilities.

LSE halls of residence will remain open for students who are in London.

View the following guidance below:

• Guidance for students on campus - Lent Term (22 Feb)
• Access to PhD Study Spaces during lockdown (22 Feb)

The UK government advice is that you should not travel, and that all students and staff should stay at their place of current residence. This is important to prevent further spread of the virus.

We recognise that there may be some exceptional circumstances where you need to travel to your term time address if you are not resident there currently, including:

• You have existing travel plans in place that you cannot change without considerable cost, including international travel 
• You do not have suitable study conditions at your non-term time address. This is especially important if you have assessments in January.  
• There are wellbeing or health matters which mean you need to return to your term time address 
• You have already arrived in the UK to satisfy quarantine requirements for the start of term. The test to release scheme may reduce the length of this period. 
• You have stayed at your term time address over the break.  

 If you are returning to an LSE hall due to one of the reasons above, please notify residences via Hallpad of your return date, so they can support your return safely.

Campus enrollment is currently paused. Students who have recently arrived on campus for the first time will be contacted, as you will need to enrol before you can access LSE facilities. 

We will write to you with more information in due course. 

Yes - students and staff coming to LSE's campus to access facilities will now need to be tested twice a week for COVID-19. 

Anyone who wants to access campus must be able to show evidence of a negative COVID test taken no more than 4 days previously. If you do not have a result within that timeframe, you will not be able to access campus until you receive confirmation of a new negative test result.

If you are planning to come to campus and have had COVID-19 in the past 90 days, you must ensure that you have followed all self-isolation protocols and that you are well before you come to campus. You will still need to take a rapid test before accessing facilities to show that you do not currently have COVID-19. 

If you can’t provide evidence of a valid negative COVID-19 test result you will not be permitted entry to LSE buildings and instructed not to come on to campus.

More information on testing and booking is available online. 

I have already tested positive for COVID-19, and have completed my self-isolation, do I need to take another test? 

If you are planning to come to campus and have had COVID-19 in the past 90 days, you must ensure that you have followed all self-isolation protocols and that you are well before you come to campus. You will still need to take a rapid test before accessing facilities to show that you do not currently have COVID-19. 

Experts advise not to take another PCR test within 90 days of your first positive test as individuals who have recovered may continue to shed fragments of virus (these fragments cannot transmit the disease) in sufficient quantities to test positive again. 

The rues for travelling to the UK  changed on 15 February, and what you need to do will depend on where you are arriving from and which countries you have travelled through. 

More information about quaranting and testing on arrival to the UK can be found on our Getting tested webpage.

The LSE's Residences team will contact students in LSE-managed halls who can no longer return to their term-time accommodation. Please contact Residential Services if you have questions relating to LSE halls of residence. 

England is currently under a national lockdown, with the UK government advising people to stay at home. 

Find out what this means for you on the UK government website.

As part of these restrictions, all teaching and learning in higher education institutions must take place online.

It's essential to follow UK and LSE rules, to help us return to in-person activities when it is safe to do so. We all have a role to play and everyone’s efforts can make a huge difference. 

LSE halls of residence will remain open as will some parts of campus, with limited access to the Library, learning spaces in the Centre Building and testing centres only, as long as it is safe to do so and in line with government guidance.

Teaching and learning

For the remainder of the 2020/21 academic year, all compulsory teaching, learning and assessments, including those taking place in Summer Term 2021, will be delivered online.

By shifting our mode of delivery, we will be able to focus our efforts on providing the best teaching and education experience possible - leaving open the opportunity for in-person engagement as soon as it is deemed safe to do so.

All programmes will continue to maximise students’ ability to work together and contribute to your learning community. A mix of interactive activities between classes will give you the opportunity to connect with our world-leading faculty, share ideas with fellow students and engage with LSE’s rich education and research culture.  

Opportunities outside of the classroom

We know your experience at LSE is shaped outside of the classroom too, and we will offer you a range of exciting opportunities to develop skills and try new things. These include giving back through volunteering, developing your entrepreneurial ideas via LSE Generate, shaping your community through LSE Students’ Union activities and societies and our new online public lecture programme. 

Enhancing health and safely

Across campus and halls of residences, we will introduce enhanced health and safety measures.

Read the 'What's been done to make campus as safe as possible?' FAQ below, or watch how we're putting safety measures in place to help make LSE COVID-secure.

Supporting your studies and your wellbeing

We are committed to working in partnership with you to enhance your experiences. Disability and Wellbeing Services, Careers, Student Advice and LSE LIFE will continue to be available to guide you through the next academic year and beyond through excellent online and in-person services where possible.

If you're staying in halls, our halls of residence webpages provide more information on the health and safety measures we have put in place for COVID-19.

Our International Student Visa Advice Team (ISVAT) have a dedicated FAQ page for coronavirus (COVID-19) immigration advice for current and prospective students.

If your question is not answered in their FAQs, use their query form to contact the team for advice.

The School does not alter the Conditions of Registration very often. We have set out in the updated Conditions some of the scenarios where it may be necessary to do this: in particular, we are mindful that government advice and guidance from regulatory bodies may change over time, as the pandemic evolves.

The health and wellbeing of our student community is our top priority and therefore it may be necessary to adjust the Conditions once again. We will always make every effort to keep changes to a minimum and to notify students in good time of any changes that are going to be made.

LSE is committed to delivering face-to-face teaching in 2021-22 and we are monitoring closely government guidance on the easing of lockdown, travel arrangements and the UK vaccination programme to help inform our planning.

Whilst the evolving situation means that it is not currently possible to say how LSE's undergraduate and taught graduate programmes will run in the new academic session, we’re preparing to welcome you to campus for in-person teaching, offering a flexible model of both in-person on-campus and online teaching and learning.

As ever, our priority remains the health and wellbeing of our community and we will continue to follow government guidance to keep our students and staff safe and we look ahead to next year.  

Further information about our planning will be shared with continuing students in due course.

For the remainder of the 2020/21 academic year, all compulsory teaching, learning and assessments, including those taking place in Summer Term 2021, will be delivered online.

However, we are exploring opportunities for voluntary in-person education, learning and community building activities on campus from Week 6 of Lent Term, as enhanced options in addition to online teaching. This will be dependent on the situation in the UK and wider restrictions, as will the further re-opening of campus and in-person student and staff services.

Further updates about what this will look like will be provided in due course.

All students will have the opportunity to work together between classes in Peer Study Groups on tasks or activities (academic and social).

We aim to timetable classes/seminars during regular hours on weekdays as far as possible. We will only schedule classes/seminars in the evenings and weekends when there is no other option. 

Where possible, we aim to ensure that the classes/seminars scheduled in the evenings and at weekends have alternative classes/seminars timetabled during weekday hours.

For undergraduate classes in which we can achieve this (keeping in mind that we will not be able to achieve this for all courses), you should be able to request a change to your allocated class via LSE for You. For graduate seminars, you should be able to select an appropriately timed group via LSE for You or via your department where possible.

Experts in our Eden Centre for Education Enhancement have guided the development of our flexible approach to teaching and learning to ensure that you benefit from LSE’s high standards in education in a safe environment.

Our flexible teaching approach will be subject to our stringent quality assurance processes, ensuring that there is no compromise on the rigour or standard of LSE degrees.

We will continue to apply our validation, monitoring and review mechanisms to assure the quality of our courses and programmes.

What are the measures you’re putting in place to uphold academic standards in online assessments? 

Students agree to uphold academic integrity standards when submitting assessments. We are finalising additional checks to prevent and detect academic misconduct. We’ll keep you updated about this across the term. 

We have had to make significant changes to teaching and learning for this academic year, to accommodate new ways of teaching and learning in light of ongoing COVID-19 measures. This means that alongside putting in additional health and wellbeing measures on campus to keep our community safe, we have had to temporarily reduce the number of courses we can offer.

We have made these changes due to the following factors: 

• From the start of the 2020/21 academic year, we will be observing social distancing protocols, which reduces the maximum in-person class sizes
• To ensure equitable access to course for all students, we aim to run each seminar or class twice. This is to accommodate students who may not be able to access a class due to time zone differences, or for students who may have caring responsibilities.

These changes mean that we have fewer available teaching spaces and greater timetabling pressures, which is why are reducing the number of courses available to students this year.  

This has not been an easy decision to make, and we know that students appreciate the variety of courses that LSE offers. Departments have considered carefully which course to continue offering, and which ones to suspend. Departments have kept the course offering as varied as possible, to allow you to select courses to create a pathway through your degree programme that suits you.

In May 2020, the Universities Minister Michelle Donelan MP announced that there would be no reduction in fees for students, as long as they received high quality teaching online.

For 2020-21, we have ensured all teaching is online-ready, through our Curriculum Shift programme, allowing us to deliver a high-quality and engaging learning experience for all students. For this reason, fees will remain the same regardless of the mode of study. Read our full statement here.

Your health and safety is paramount. Across campus and halls of residences we have introduced enhanced health and safety measures. Where appropriate it is likely that we will go beyond government guidance, based on scientific advice and the expertise of our academic faculty. 

To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, everyone on campus must adhere to the following requirements:

Universal Face Coverings: everyone must wear a face covering over the nose and mouth in School buildings, and in designated campus areas when others are present unless they are exempt from doing so for medical or disability related reasons.

Social Distancing: classrooms, study spaces and communal areas have been reconfigured to provide at least the government recommended distance between people, and while on campus, everyone is expected to maintain this recommended physical distance from others where possible.

Self-Monitoring: anyone coming to campus must self-monitor for symptoms and stay at home if they have potentially been exposed to COVID-19 or have had any symptoms over the past two weeks. Anyone with symptoms should self-isolate and get tested for coronavirus. For further guidance on symptoms and related matters please see this NHS page.

Track and Trace: we ask that you use our LSE Trace system to enable us to look after your health, safety and wellbeing, as well as that of other members of our community.

COVID-19 Reporting: If you test positive for COVID-19 you must self-isolate as per the NHS guidance and inform the School via our LSE trace system as soon as possible.

The Library is open every day between 8am-10pm. However, anyone coming to campus must get tested twice a week, and have received a recent negative test before accessing facilities.

You will be able to use and borrow books using the self-issue system. Walk-in browse and borrowing will not be available.

We have also worked hard to make core books and texts available online for you to access remotely, and we will continue to add to these collections through the academic year. You can also access one-to-one support online, to help you get the most from the Library and its resources.

Over the past nine months, we have been working to increase the number of resources available online, to enhance all students’ access to Library materials.

Find out how to access Library resources, both online and in-person. And, view the following guidance below about access:

• Guidance for students on campus - Lent Term (22 Feb)
• Access to PhD Study Spaces during lockdown (22 Feb)

There are lots of ways you can get involved with the Students’ Union this year. Visit the LSESU website for information on what's on and how to join in.

We know your experience at LSE is shaped outside of the classroom too, and we will offer you a range of exciting opportunities to develop skills and try new things. 

These include giving back through volunteering, developing your entrepreneurial ideas via LSE Generate, shaping your community through LSE Students’ Union activities and societies and our new online public lecture programme. You can also access thriving regional alumni groups too, which operate across the globe.

We are committed to working in partnership with you to enhance your experiences and Disability and Wellbeing Services, Careers, Student Advice and LSE LIFE will continue to be available to guide you through the next academic year and beyond through excellent online and in-person services where possible.

We are working hard to keep our community safe, well and supported as we have put in place a range of measures to help make LSE COVID-secure. 
 
However, it is important that students who are ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ and students who live with someone who is ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ read and follow the advice available on the NHS website. 
 
If you are ‘clinically vulnerable’, or live with someone who is clinically vulnerable, you should also read and follow the advice available on the NHS website.

If you would like to speak to a member of staff about your wellbeing on campus please contact the Disability and Wellbeing Service by emailing disabilitydyslexia@lse.ac.uk.

LSE has undertaken extensive and rigourous risk assessments and health and safety assessments on all rooms and communal areas of the LSE campus. 

The measures we are putting in place are designed to keep our community as safe as possible. We are unapologetic about the fact that we will sometimes go beyond UK government guidance on social distancing or the use of face coverings to ensure our campus is safe. 

If you're exempt from wearing a face mask, then you'll need to register as exempt with the Student Wellbeing Service and display an identifying sticker on your LSE ID card. Find out more about registering and collecting your sticker on the student mask exemptions webpage.