I don't know how it's done in UK universities now either, but I do know that many (most?) of the less prestigious universities have switched to modular courses where it is the accumulation of points that counts rather than performance in finals.

I always think of classes as a kind of compromise between a lecture which is a large number of students and no individual contact between the lecturer and student except for the occasional clarifying question and a tutorial which is a very focussed meeting with a tutor and typically four or five students where exercise that were issued the previous week are discussed in detail.

Classes always seem to me to be the worst of both worlds: big enough for weak students to hide in (and thus fail to get the help they need) but not big enough to get an economy of scale.