Decision report 201102760

Summary
Mr C was a student at the university. During his third year he fell and injured his elbow. He said that his academic performance suffered as a result of the pain he was in and the medication he was taking. He completed his fourth year in June 2011 and was awarded a lower second class degree (2:2). He submitted an appeal for this to be increased to a 2:1 due to his medical situation having affected two of his third year results. The university did not accept his appeal as it referred to academic results from 2010 and there was a 20 working day deadline for submitting appeals.

Mr C complained to us that the university unreasonably applied their time limit, as his appeal concerned the 2011 decision to award him a 2:2, rather than the 2010 assessment of his third year work. The university took the view that, as honours classification is a mathematical calculation based on academic results over the third and fourth year, Mr C's appeal had to be viewed in terms of his third year results. Their appeals procedure allows for late appeals to be considered where there are exceptional circumstances preventing the student from raising their medical situation within the proper timescale. However, they did not consider Mr C's circumstances to be exceptional. Having looked at all the information, we did not uphold Mr C's complaint as we found that the university took into account the relevant evidence when deciding not to accept his appeal.

Mr C raised a further complaint that the university did not make him awarethat there was a potential remedy - to exclude his third year results from the calculation of his overall Honours classification. Although the university did not specifically advise Mr C of this, we found that their appeals procedure put no restrictions on the grounds for appeal claimed by students or the remedies sought. Ultimately, as Mr C's overall appeal was time-barred this became irrelevant. However, we were satisfied that there were no barriers to this remedy being sought or achieved if the university considered it appropriate.