UCL REGISTRY AND ACADEMIC
SERVICES DIVISION
APPENDIX 13
PROCEDURE FOR EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES
GUIDELINES FOR IMPLEMENTING THE REGULATIONS AND PROCEDURE IN
RESPECT OF EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES IN RELATION TO STUDENTS’
PERFORMANCE IN EXAMINATIONS AND ASSESSMENTS
Procedure for students to notify tutors of extenuating circumstances which may
have affected their performance in examinations or assessments
1.
Students must be given clear instructions (e.g. in the Student Handbook) in
advance of the examination period and preferably at the start of the academic year
about the procedure for making submissions about extenuating circumstances. This
should include advice about the form to be filled in, the supporting documentation
required, the deadline for submission and the procedure for consideration of
submissions. In addition, it is good practice to send a reminder email about the
procedure to all students at key times of the year when assessments and/or
examinations are taking place
2.
Typically extenuating circumstances are:
Severe physical or psychological distress that is highly detrimental to a student’s
academic performance (e.g. diagnosis of cancer; severe asthma; severe
depression; death of a close relative).
Medical circumstances or other circumstances where substantial impairment of a
student’s performance would be expected (e.g. on-going care for medical treatment,
such as severe and persistent pain, moderate depression, insomnia, and
extenuating circumstances such as significant difficulties in a student’s domestic
life).
Less serious circumstances but still sufficient to impair a student’s academic
performance (e.g. death of a distant relative; severe upper respiratory tract infection;
hay fever; problems with personal relationships).
3.
There must be a designated person in each Department/ Division who deals with
extenuating circumstances. This will normally be the Departmental/ Divisional
Tutor. Submissions about extenuating circumstances must be made to this person,
or as prescribed in the instructions provided, normally included in the Student
Handbook. An alternative individual must also be clearly identified in case the
Departmental/ Divisional Tutor is unavailable.
4.
All submissions from students regarding extenuating circumstances must be
submitted to the designated person on a standard form 1 at the time when, or
immediately after, these circumstances arise. A template form for students is
1
See Appendix 14
provided here. The template form for students can be adapted by Departments/
Divisions with the permission of the Faculty Board of Examiners (electronic copies
of the template form can be obtained from the Curricular Development and
Examiners Section in the Registry and Academic Services Division, email
examiners@ucl.ac.uk).
5.
Cases must be supported by documentary evidence such as a medical certificate,
doctor’s letter or other relevant evidence. Students should be given information
about what to ask their doctor to provide, i.e. a statement of what is wrong together
with the date and duration of the illness.2 Submission must be made either at the
time of or as soon as possible after the incidence of the circumstances concerned,
and, in any case, no later than seven days after the date of the assessment or
examination affected. In very exceptional circumstances, a case can be made by
the Board of Examiners to the Chair or Deputy Chair of the UCL Board of
Examiners (UCLBE) to take into consideration medical and/or extenuating
circumstances submitted after this deadline.
6.
Although the primary responsibility for reporting extenuating circumstances lies with
students, tutors may, if they think the information is relevant and they can provide a
useful perspective on the effect of extenuating circumstances on a given student’s
performance, also make submissions about their students if they think the
information is relevant and they can provide a useful perspective on the effect of
extenuating circumstances on a given student’s performance. However, tutors may
not submit extenuation forms against the wishes of the student in question. A
template form for staff is set out in Appendix 15. The template form for staff can be
adapted by Departments/ Divisions with the permission of the Faculty Board of
Examiners (electronic copies of the template form can be obtained from the
Curricular Development and Examiners Section in the Registry and Academic
Services Division, email (examiners@ucl.ac.uk). A generic form is also available to
download from the regulations website (Appendix 15
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/acd_regs).
7.
This form should also be used to indicate information about any mitigation taken for
an individual student as a result of extenuating circumstances, such as an extension
to an essay deadline.
8.
Information will also be submitted by the Examinations Section on events in
examination halls that have affected an individual student or a number of students.
These will be in the form of an email to the relevant Examinations Liaison Officer or
Graduate Course Contact.
9.
Information will also have been provided by the Examinations Section on students
who have been granted special assessment arrangements to mitigate known
medical circumstances.
10.
Where the student is registered on a combined honours or joint degree, one of the
Departments/Divisions will be specified as the home Department/ Division, which
2
Self-certification in this respect has been deemed unacceptable by UCL. If the Department/ Division is
unsure about the nature and severity of any medical condition, the UCL Health Centre can offer generic
advice but cannot discuss named individuals.
will be responsible for grading the extenuating circumstances. Information on such
grading will be transmitted to the Chair of the Board of the other Department/
Division and, where it exists, the Chair of an umbrella Board.
The conduct of the pre-meeting
11.
The UCL Regulations for Boards of Examiners prescribe that there shall be a premeeting before the main meeting of the Boards of Examiners concerned with
progression or final awards to consider submissions received from students about
circumstances which are likely to affect or to have affected their performance in
examinations or assessments which they wish to have taken into account.
12.
The pre-meeting operates with authority formally delegated from the Board of
Examiners to which it reports.
13.
The constitution of the pre-meeting must include the Chair of the Board of
Examiners (and/or his/her deputy or an approved alternate), an appropriate
Departmental/ Divisional Tutor and the Departmental/ Divisional Examinations
Liaison Officer. There should be at least three people involved in the decisionmaking. There should be a member of staff allocated to take minutes of the
meeting and the decisions made. The programme external examiner should not be
invited to attend this meeting.
14.
The extenuating circumstances meeting should take place sufficiently after the last
assessment to allow students, staff and the Examinations Section time to submit
information about extenuating circumstances, but also before the main Board of
Examiners meeting in order to allow for further information to be sought, where
appropriate, and the decisions made and recorded. It is suggested that this should
normally be around a week before the meeting of the Board of Examiners.
15.
The pre-meeting will consider all submissions in full and make recommendations to
the Board of Examiners according to the tariff specified in paragraph 32 below.
Those recommendations must identify the modules, examinations or assessments,
including relevant PORTICO module codes, to which they relate. The Chair of the
Board of Examiners will be responsible for communicating the recommendations of
the pre-meeting to the Board of Examiners.
16.
The pre-meeting should only consider submissions which are submitted on the
standard form and are supported by appropriate documentation, wherever possible.
17.
The pre-meeting’s consideration of cases will be carried out without knowledge of
the marks for the courses concerned.
18.
The pre-meeting and/or the Board of Examiners can seek advice and further
information on medical conditions from the UCL Health Centre but not in relation to
particular individuals.
19.
The pre-meeting will then use its judgement to grade the extenuating circumstances
according to a simple four-point scale that takes account of severity, duration and
likely impact (see paragraph 32 below). The scale should be applied sensitively: it
should be applied according to the likely effect of the circumstances cited upon the
individual concerned. It is possible for circumstances which prima facie appear
similar to lead to different grades.
20.
The grades may relate to a single course assessment or to whole diet of courses
depending on whether the problem has been acute, chronic or acute but with a
lasting impact. Although the Board of Examiners will only use the grades in relation
to some candidates where there is reasonable scope for compensation according to
the circumstances and the marks achieved, grades must be decided for all
candidates who submit extenuating circumstances forms since the pre-meeting will
not be aware of the marks for the courses and candidates under consideration.
21.
Extenuating circumstances should be considered for students of all years and a
grade established in each year. These records should be reported to the Board and
held over until the student’s final award is decided. The Extenuating Circumstances
Pre-Meeting should review the grades given in each year for students who are
being considered for a final award and ensure that all the information is available,
and provide an overall review of them, if necessary.
22.
The deliberations and recommendations of the pre-meeting should be minuted and
given or transmitted to the Chair of the Board of Examiners, but only the
recommendations will be disclosed to the Board. Information on these should also
be transmitted to Chairs of joint or combined degrees, or of umbrella Boards, where
these exist.
23.
The recommendations should also be transmitted to the Chairs of Faculty Boards of
Examiners accompanied by a collated summary of the recommendations at the
same time as the Board of Examiners for overview and endorsement.
24.
Chairs of Faculty Boards of Examiners maintain a log of the recommendations and
the decisions taken in order to review practices and procedures and to ensure
equity across the Faculty. A summary of the log will be submitted to UCLBE when
the log has been maintained for a period of three years.
Procedure at the meeting of the Board of Examiners
25.
After the Board of Examiners has completed the academic assessment of the
students’ marks it should consider extenuating circumstances. The Chair of the
Board of Examiners will inform the Board of all the candidates who have submitted
information about extenuating circumstances. He/she will present the tariff grades
recommended by the pre-meeting, ensuring that the attention of the Board of
Examiners is drawn, in particular, to those candidates who are borderline cases,
both at Pass/Fail, for other classification purposes and for progression.
26.
The Chair will not inform the Board of the detail of individual cases, but the Board
has the right to request and be given such detail to inform any particular decision.
The Chair shall have discretion, in exceptional circumstances, to decline to give
detail of the circumstances of any individual case.
27.
Where a final-year candidate successfully applied for extenuating circumstances
and the outcome is to change the classification that he/she receives, the marks for
the candidate must not be changed as it is undesirable to alter marks on nonacademic grounds.
28.
In the case of an Honours classification for a final-year undergraduate or a
Pass/Merit/Distinction 3 classification for a postgraduate degree, the marks must
not be changed.
29.
However, in the case of an undergraduate where Pass/Fail, progression or
qualification for Honours is an issue, the marks can be altered to obtain the desired
result.4 For instance, if a student has a mark of 38, but, on the grounds of
extenuating circumstances the Board wishes to award a Pass grade, the mark must
be altered to 40 (i.e. a Pass).
30.
Similarly, in the case of postgraduate students at the Pass/Fail borderline, the mark
must be raised to 50%.
31.
Boards must be careful where concessions have already been granted to a student
for an existing condition, e.g. the extension of a coursework deadline or extra time in
an examination. Where such a student has been given an extenuating
circumstances grade for a condition on the basis of which he/she has already been
granted special treatment (for one or more courses) this should be brought to the
Board’s attention so that double consideration is avoided. However, there may be
cases where the special assessment arrangements only apply to an examination
and where consideration may need to be given for other assessments such as
coursework. The Pre-Meeting must ensure that it is clear when grading’s given to
which assessment component(s) they apply.
Guide to applying extenuating circumstances grades
32.
The following grades should be used to indicate the severity of the extenuating
circumstances and to inform the Board of Examiners as to how such circumstances
might have impacted on a candidate’s performance and/or overall result. Only
these grades should be used. There should not be any indication of grades
between the ones specified below.
33.
A – Severe physical or psychological distress that would be expected to be highly
detrimental to a student’s academic performance (e.g. diagnosis of cancer; severe
asthma; severe depression; death of a close relative).
B – Medical circumstances or other circumstances where substantial impairment of
a student’s performance would be expected (e.g. on-going care for medical
treatment, such as severe and persistent pain, moderate depression, insomnia, and
extenuating circumstances such as significant difficulties in a student’s domestic
life).
3
Where these awards are available i.e. there is no Distinction classification for a Postgraduate Certificate
and no Merit classification for a Postgraduate Diploma.
4
In cases where an accrediting professional body requires a specific pass mark on a course or courses to
deem the candidate professionally competent, the Board may, at its discretion, make slight alterations to
the mark appropriately.
C – Less serious but still sufficient to impair a student’s academic performance (e.g.
death of a distant relative; severe upper respiratory tract infection; hay fever;
problems with personal relationships).
X – Problems that are reasonably considered to be insignificant to the student’s
academic performance, or where there has already been mitigation for the
circumstances.
Extenuating circumstances guidelines (revised December 2010)