Decision Report 201304371

Summary

Mrs C, who is a student association representative, made a complaint on behalf of a student (Mr A). Mr A had lodged an academic appeal (on the grounds of extenuating circumstances) which was only partly upheld by the university. Mrs C had submitted a formal request to the university (on behalf of Mr A) for a review of the decision to only partially uphold the academic appeal. However, this request had been refused. As a result of the university upholding its original decision, Mr A was not able to continue his studies. Mrs C and Mr A felt that the university had failed to reasonably consider Mr A's circumstances both in terms of the original appeal and the subsequent request for a review.

Our investigation found that the university had not accurately taken into account all relevant information in order to consider the complete picture of Mr A's circumstances and to give his appeal fair consideration. Although they had allowed a late application claiming extenuating circumstances, they had not responded fully to that claim, and we found that the whole process was not reasonably followed.

Recommendations

We recommended that the university:

• apologise for not reasonably handling the appeal and review; and
• reconsider the appeal made by Mr A.