Decision report 201000292

Summary
The university awarded Mr C a degree, but he did not receive the classification to
which he thought he was entitled. He complained that the university failed to follow their procedure for classification of his degree, failed to follow their appeals process (and that there was excessive delay in handling his academic appeal), and failed to answer questions about how the marking scheme was applied in his case.

We cannot consider issues about academic judgment, so we could not comment on whether a degree was awarded at the correct level. We can, however, look at whether or not the university followed the proper procedure. In Mr C’s case, the university acknowledged that the student handbook explanation of the calculation of final awards was unclear. They revised this for the following year. They also gave us a fuller explanation of how they calculated Mr C’s mark. We found, however, that the handbook was only a general guide for students, rather than a rulebook saying exactly how an award should be calculated. Having considered the evidence supplied by Mr C and the university, we were satisfied that they properly followed the procedure when classifying his degree and that they also took appropriate steps to improve the explanation to students. We therefore did not uphold this complaint, nor his complaint about his questions on the marking scheme. We found that Mr C asked these after the appeal process was completed. The university told him that they had already dealt with the appeal and were not going to re-open it. We found this to be a reasonable response in the circumstances.

We did, however, uphold Mr C’s complaint that the university did not follow their proper procedure when handling his academic appeal. They decided that Mr C’s original appeal was not competent. We took the view that they handled this decision appropriately. The university then invited Mr C to submit another appeal. Their communication on this second appeal was unreasonable. There was considerable delay in dealing with it, and Mr C received no explanations or updates about this at the time. It took the university four months to deal with the appeal, which was well over the timescale suggested in the guidance notes.

Recommendations
We recommended that the university formally apologise to Mr C for the delay in
handling his appeal.