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Learning and Teaching Handbook

6.3.6: Serious Adverse Circumstances (including the Scrutiny Sub-Committee of the Board of Examiners)

1. Serious adverse circumstances are defined as exceptional personal circumstances, outside the control of the student, that have prevented them from either acquiring or demonstrating the skills, knowledge or competencies required to meet the learning outcomes associated with an assessment that contributes to the qualification for which they are studying notwithstanding their best efforts, in consultation with their department and College, to mitigate those circumstances.

2. Where a student feels that there have been serious adverse circumstances that have affected his/her assessment it is their responsibility to inform the appropriate department as soon as possible.

The consideration of evidence of serious adverse circumstances 'in year'

3. Where a student feels that there have been serious adverse circumstances that have affected their ability to submit a piece of assessed work they should inform the department as soon as possible. The department will then be able to consider whether it is possible to negotiate an extension to the deadline of offer an alternative option to enable the student to complete the in-year assessment or coursework. The University policy on the consideration of serious adverse circumstances relating to in-year assessed work is laid out in Section 6.2.5 of the Learning and Teaching Handbook.

4. University-wide guidance on the remedies to be applied in the case of students submitting assessed work late due to serious adverse circumstances which are not covered by the policy on student absence and illness or the process of self-certification is as follows:

a. Students are required to submit work before the deadline for submission (where a department/school requires students to submit work in both hard copy and electronic formats, the work must be submitted in both formats before the deadline for submission). Students must be informed in writing of the deadline for a given piece of work and to this end submission dates should be displayed as a matter of routine on departmental noticeboards and where feasible be included in programme and module handbooks. It is good practice to also notify students in writing on an individual basis where the department/school deems this to be possible and appropriate.

b. If a student, for whatever reason, believes that he/she is unable to submit a piece of summative assessed work (including a dissertation) by the due deadline as a result of serious adverse circumstances, he/she should submit a written request for an extension to the Chair of the appropriate Board of Examiners, or his/her appointed nominee(s), well in advance of the due deadline and explain his/her reasons. Where appropriate a student must provide supporting evidence for his/her reasons. The Chair of the Board of Examiners concerned, or his/her appointed nominee(s), will have to consider whether in his/her view the grounds offered by the student are sufficient to warrant an extension to the original deadline. Normally the only grounds on which an extension will be granted are where circumstances beyond the control of the student have prevented submission.

c. If an extension is granted then the new deadline must be made clear to the student, in writing, and the procedures with regard to meeting the new deadline should be those outlined in this policy statement. 

d. If a student who has not been granted an extension fails to submit a piece of summative assessed work (including a dissertation) by the due deadline the work will not be marked and a mark of zero will be recorded in line with the University's guidance on penalties for the late submission of assessed work.

A flowchart setting out this process can be found in Appendix A6.10. The consideration of evidence of serious adverse circumstances by the scrutiny sub-committee of boards of examiners

5. Where a student feels that there have been serious adverse circumstances that have affected his/her assessment it is their responsibility to inform the appropriate board of examiners of this before the board meets, in accordance with the procedures laid out in Section 6.2.6 of the Learning and Teaching Handbook.

6. All serious adverse circumstances submissions to the board of examiners should be considered by a scrutiny sub-committee of the board of examiners. The membership of this sub-committee must include as a minimum:

a. the chair of the board of examiners (chair to the sub-committee)

b. the secretary of the board of examiners (secretary to the sub-committee)

c. where the secretary to the board of examiners is a member of academic staff: one other member of the board of examiners; where the secretary to the board of examiners is not a member of academic staff: two other members of the board of examiners;

Where possible the scrutiny sub-committee should include at least one male and one female member of staff.

7. The scrutiny sub-committee shall consider all serious adverse circumstances evidence submitted by students, and for each submission grade the impact of the serious adverse circumstances reported on the assessment of the student concerned in accordance with the following scale:

Impact

0

The evidence submitted does not indicate that the alleged serious adverse circumstances had any adverse effect on the performance of the student in his/her assessment(s) OR the circumstances described have already been sufficiently mitigated through the granting of a concession or other adjustment OR the alleged circumstances were experienced outside of the examination period but were not notified to the University at the time of the occurrence and no explanation has been given by the student as to why the University was not informed

1

The evidence submitted indicates that the serious adverse circumstances are likely to have had a small adverse effect on the performance of the student in his/her assessment(s)

2

The evidence submitted indicates that the serious adverse circumstances are likely to have had a significant adverse effect on the performance of the student in his/her assessment(s)

3

The evidence submitted indicates that the serious adverse circumstances are are likely to have had a very significant adverse effect on the performance of the student in his/her assessment(s)

8. In addition to being graded for impact, the rating agreed by the sub-committee should also include information on the duration of the impact indicating, as appropriate [Specified day(s), Specified week(s), Specified term(s), Specified assessment/exam period(s), Specified Academic year(s)]. Consequently, all serious adverse circumstances submissions should receive a number grading followed by description of the duration of the impact.

9. The secretary of the scrutiny sub-committee is responsible for ensuring that a written record is kept of meetings of the sub-committee.

10. The gradings agreed by the scrutiny sub-committee, and the specific modules to which the gradings apply, shall be reported to the board of examiners, and the receipt and consideration of this information by the board of examiners must be recorded in the minutes of the board of examiners.

11. Where progression, award and classification are considered by a faculty level board of examiners (for example Combined Honours, Natural Sciences, joint honours programmes and the MA Research Methods programmes in social sciences), SACs shall be graded by the scrutiny sub-committee of the relevant subject board of examiners. Once all SACs have been graded at subject level, those relating to students to be considered at faculty-level boards of examiners should be submitted in a timely way to the chairs and secretaries of the relevant faculty-level board. This allows any variations in the grading of an individual SAC to be identified and the relevant subjects to be asked to provide a structured response to support the generic grading definition they had allocated. A scrutiny sub-committee of the faculty- level board (this sub-committee being required to operate in accordance with University policy for all scrutiny subcommittees) should then consider whether there was any justification for the differences in grading, and if necessary reclassify the grading if appropriate.

Consideration of serous adverse circumstances at meetings of boards of examiners

12. Consideration of serious adverse circumstances must be in accordance with the followin requirements:

a. Relevant serious adverse circumstances evidence in respect of modules taken in the second year should be considered by the board of examiners for the purposes of progression only. This information should then be brought to the final board of examiners meeting for consideration for the purpose of award and classification.

b. At no point should marks be changed in the light of serious adverse circumstances.