Appeals
Read the SRC’s Advice Centre ‘Guide To Appeals’ here.
You can appeal by letter against various decisions that affect your study if you believe you have grounds for appeal. The rules relating to appeals are listed in the University Calendar.
The only two grounds for appeal are:
- Unfair or Defective Procedure
- Failure to take into account medical or other adverse personal circumstances
Health Warning
Academic appeals are not just an automatic recourse for anyone who is unhappy with their grades. You need to have grounds for appealing (see above), be able to present your case, and show supporting evidence. Academic appeals take a lot of work to prepare properly. If you aren’t prepared to put that work in, you need to ask yourself how important this is to you.
Of course, The Advice Centre is there to help and support you with all of this. But at the end of the day it’s your appeal – your responsibility.
The first thing to do is to approach your department to try and obtain an informal resolution of the problem. The Advice Centre staff can help with this if you don’t feel confident about approaching staff, or aren’t sure what to say.
Consulting at departmental level won’t necessarily avoid the need to go to a formal appeal, but remember that when you do approach a Faculty to notify them of an appeal, they will themselves approach the relevant Department for feedback on the case.
If you have already had a good meeting with someone in the Department then their report to Faculty stands a better chance of being positive towards your case.
If you do wish to appeal, the first stage of an appeal is always to your Faculty. You have 10 working days from the date of the decision to submit your ‘intimation of intention to appeal’{/file} to the Faculty Secretary. If you are working towards an informal resolution of the problem you can ask for an extension to this time limit. For a sample intimation of intention to appeal letter, click here.
You then have a further 20 working days to submit a full appeal letter with all your evidence included. For tips on putting together the full appeal letter, click here.
Your appeal is likely to be dealt with under preliminary disposal (i.e. without a hearing), hence the need for a really comprehensive appeal letter. Sometimes, though, the faculty appeals committee will want to hold a full hearing so they can ask you questions about your appeal.
At any time during this process, if you are at all unsure, want to talk it over with someone or would like to request representation, please contact The Advice Centre and our trained and experienced staff will be happy to help.
FAQs
There is also a very useful FAQ section on the university website.