An academic appeal is the process to follow if you wish to challenge an academic outcome. There are two formal stages to the academic appeal process. The following information relates only to Stage One academic appeals.

In order for an appeal to eligible for consideration by the University, your concerns must meet one or more grounds from a specific list. If your appeal succeeds, you could be offered a outcome such as:

• An further attempt at one or more assessments
• A removal of the reassessment mark cap
• A repeat of a period of study
• (In the case of finalists only) an uplift of your degree classification if you are within a specific percentage of the next classification boundary

In most cases you can’t get a mark changed without doing a further assessment. If you think a mistake has been made in marking, you may be able to apply for a remark and information about this can be found below.

A stage one academic appeal can only be submitted once, and you are not able to submit additional evidence or information after you have submitted your appeal. It's really important to make sure your appeal has all the information and evidence you want to include before submitting through the form on myUEA. For more information about academic appeal submission deadlines, see below.

You have 10 working days to submit an appeal. This timescale starts from the working day after you receive the outcome against which you are appealing. This deadline can be flexible at the discretion of your school. To request an extension, email your School's LTS team. If you are waiting for an appointment with advice(su) this can be used as evidence when requesting an extension.

It is really important that your appeal explains why you think that one (or more) of the permitted reasons (“grounds”) for an appeal applies to you. It is not enough to be dissatisfied with your results.

An appeal will only be upheld if one or more of the following are found:

1. Your performance was affected by EC’s not previously submitted. (To justify this ground, you will have to explain why you were not able to submit ECs at the time.)
2. Exceptional Circumstances (EC’s) were not fully and properly considered
3. Correct Procedure was not followed which undermined the validity of a result
4. Prejudice and/or bias affected the academic result
5. Significant changes were made to a course without being properly communicated
6. The teaching, supervision or research training was insufficient
7. The learning support provided was unsatisfactory or inappropriate
8. Natural Justice dictates that the appeal be upheld

To make a Stage One academic appeal, you need:

• A written statement demonstrating how your situation justifies one or more of the valid appeal grounds
• supporting evidence for your appeal, such as medical evidence, evidence from emails or supporting letters from friends or family

Here are a few points to consider when preparing your appeal statement:

• Go into as much relevant detail as you can about the reasons for your appeal (it often helps to set out information in chronological order)
• Including dates in your statement will contextualise your circumstances with affected assessments or periods of study. If an event affecting your performance happened some time before the outcome about which you are appealing, explain why you were still affected at the time
• Explain the impact of your circumstances on your ability to complete your university work
• Talk about what has changed now to limit the chances of the same circumstances affecting you in the future

It is not possible to give an exhaustive list of the types of documents that can be used as supporting evidence, because this will depend on your individual circumstances. Evidence from official sources such as medical professionals, UEA staff or other support services is preferred.

You can also use unofficial documents such as copies of emails, texts, online chats or statements of support. The person writing the statement should identify themselves and confirm that they consent to the statement being used for your appeal.

In order to submit your Stage One academic appeal, you need to complete this online form on the UEA website. The appeal form includes sections where you upload your statement and supporting evidence. Before you do that, take a look at the next section to find out how we can support you through this process.

It's important to remember that you only have one opportunity to submit your stage one academic appeal, and you will not be able to submit additional evidence or information later. If a stage one academic appeal is submitted to LTS without sufficient information or evidence, it may be deemed ineligible and will not be taken to FACP. If this happens, you will not have another opportunity to submit your appeal.

We would encourage you to use all support and guidance available to ensure you are submitting the best possible appeal.

If you cannot access the online form because your UEA account has been closed, contact SIZ to request your account is reopened.

You can request an appointment here with one of our advisors, who can help by:

• advising whether your situation justifies any of the appeal grounds and if so, which ones
• explaining possible outcomes of the appeals process
• providing feedback on a draft of your appeal statement before you submit it
• advising on what sort of evidence would best support your circumstances

Please be aware that our advisors can only recommend changes or additions to your statement. We cannot write it for you.

Once you have submitted the appeal form, you should receive a email from LTS within 5 working days acknowledging receipt of the appeal. This will also inform you of the date on which your appeal will be considered. Appeals are considered by a team of trained academic called the Faculty Appeals and Complaints Panel (FACP). They meet approximately every four weeks. The timescale of your appeal will depend on when your submission falls in relation to the next FACP meeting. You will receive an outcome by email within ten working days of the FACP meeting.

The timescale from start to finish can take up to 6 weeks and in some instances may take longer. Where the outcome of your appeal results in further attempts at assessments, you may have to interrupt your studies until the next assessment period.

Will my situation be better?

Looking forward at the year ahead and taking in to consideration your situation now and what additional support might be put in place for you, do you think this coming year will give you a better chance to perform to your best academic ability?

Should I make the request now or see how I do in my reassessments?

If you have not passed coursework and exams and have been sent to reassessment, you could wait and see how you get on in your reassessments before making the decision.

However, if you take your reassessments and fail them you are likely to be withdrawn from the course (this doesn’t apply to those taking delayed first attempts in August). If you are withdrawn from the course you will need to make an academic appeal against withdrawal in order to request to repeat the year. It might be better to request a repeat year or appeal now and ask for a delayed first sit, if you have grounds. The appeal process takes 4-6 weeks and if you wait to appeal until you get resit results, there may not be time for you to go through the appeal process following withdrawal from the course to enable you to start studying again in September if your appeal is upheld.

If you find yourself in this situation you may be looking at taking a break in studies before you are able to return for the next academic year.

While this may seem worrying, we're not looking make anyone unduly concerned. We want you to be as informed as possible in order to make the best possible decisions.

If you feel, based upon your current situation, you are unlikely to perform at your best in this upcoming assessment period and would like to repeat the year then this is an option you should consider. To have a chance of starting a repeat year this September, you would need to start the process of requesting it before the resits.

Can you afford a repeat year?

If you are studying with the financial support of Student Finance in terms of receiving Tuition Fee and Maintenance loans, and you have never repeated a year, you should receive a further year's funding.

Eligibility for student finances is worked as follows:

• length of course + 1 additional year – previous study (HE study regardless of whether Student Finance was taken or not) = funding available.
  • Example 1.
    Johnny is in his 3rd year of a Drama degree. He is in his final year and hasn’t repeated a year before but has requested to. For him the calculation would be:
    3 years (length of course) + 1 additional years – 3 years (the three years study he has just completed) = 1 years available funding.
  • Example 2.
    Jess was also studying Drama and in her 3rd year but she had completed a year of Biology before switching to Drama. For her the calculation would be:
    3 years (length of course) + 1 additional years – 4 years (the 3 years study she has just completed on the Drama course and the 1 year doing Biology) = 0 years available funding.

Re-marking is only available for work which has not been double marked. If work has been double marked, you may be able to appeal, once the marked is confirmed, if you have a good reason for an academic appeal such as extenuating circumstances.

You cannot ask for an exam or an OSCE or OSPE to be re-marked, even if it has been moderated rather than double marked.

You must make the request within 10 working days of publication of the mark on eVision. If you think that the mark has been incorrectly recorded on e:Vision, raise this with LTS so that this can be checked.

If you have grounds for an appeal but instead request a re-mark and are given one, a later appeal could be rejected.

Before you ask for a re-mark, you must ask to see the marker to discuss for the reasons for the mark. If you have discussed the point by email, you can use copies of the emails to prove this. If the marker does not respond to requests for a meeting, come and talk to us at advice(su).

Once you have decided that a re-mark is your best option, you should complete form LTS005 and send it to LTS.

On the form, you will need to show that one or more of the following reasons applies, and produce evidence that:

1. the mark is not consistent with the feedback given
2. feedback suggests that part of your submission has not been considered
3. the assessment criteria have not been appropriately applied

The evidence needed might include:

• a statement from you quoting the feedback showing that it appears that the marker has failed to mark part of your work, (for example, the feedback says that you did not mention a point that you have covered in your work); or
• a copy of the feedback and a statement from you explaining why it does not address points in your work, giving examples; or
• evidence showing why the marking does not meet the assessment criteria given for the work. This could be a statement from you giving examples of where the marking does not reflect the published assessment criteria.

When your work has been remarked, if there is a difference between the original mark and the second mark, the Director of Learning and Teaching for your School will adjudicate and award a mark. Remember, this could be lower than your original mark.

ECs must be reported online via e:vision before your deadline passes, by students on undergraduate and taught postgraduate programmes. When reporting Extenuating Circumstances you will be able to use a self-certification extension, which will allow you a 7 day extension without evidence, or make an evidenced extenuating circumstances request which can be for a longer period of time. UEA guidance for exceptional circumstances is available here.

If making an exceptional circumstances request you will need to do this before your submission deadline. When submitting a request you will need to provide:

• Give enough detail about the circumstances and how they are affecting your ability to study
• Provide appropriate supporting evidence (unless you are using one of your self-certificate extensions)
• Make sure they fit within the EC guidelines followed by the UEA. You can see these here.

For most assessments, you may be able to request a 7 day self-certification extension if you realise you need a longer period of time 7 days before your submission date without submitting evidence to support this. If you require a longer deadline, you would again, submit an exceptional circumstances request via the form on e:vision but would need to provide more detail and evidence to support your request.

• If you are asking for more than one thing (for example – an extension and end of year request), you must submit separate reports for each.
• If you have a problem with an assessment (for example you are going to miss an exam because of illness, or will be late submitting work) you must make an EC report before your submission deadline.
• If you are unsure about how much detail you need to give or what evidence you need to provide, come and see us and we will try and help you to explain this to the University.
• The boxes where you complete details of the circumstances and the impact on you have a 250 character limit. In some cases, depending on the circumstances, this may not be enough space for you to explain your ECs in enough detail. In that case, type in “Please see email” and include a full explanation in an email to LTS.
• For a step by step process of how to access and complete the EC form on e:vision, please see UEA’s guidance here.

If you are facing difficulties relating to your personal wellbeing, please do submit an EC to show to the University how you are being impacted. If you are seeking support for this, please contact the University Faculty Wellbeing Teams here.

EC requests need to be made to the University before your submission deadline. However, there are other ways to make the University aware that your work has been impacted.

If you have submitted your assessment or attended your assessment event, it may be appropriate for you to submit a Post Deadline request to the University with evidence, within 10 working days after the original submission deadline. You can submit a post deadline request if:

• You have submitted your assessment on time/attended your assessment event, but your performance was impacted by Exceptional Circumstances (ECs) and you want to request another attempt
• You have submitted your assessment but will receive a late submission penalty as you submitted your work up to 48 hours after the agreed deadline, due to experiencing Exceptional Circumstances
• You have in place reasonable adjustments for sympathetic consideration of deadlines agreed by Student Services and you submitted your work up to 7 days after the agreed deadline

If you have been unable to submit your assessment or attend your assessment event, and did not submit your exceptional circumstances request before the deadline you may have grounds to submit an academic appeal. Please see our guidance above relating to academic appeals.

Our advice team have a wealth of knowledge and experience in dealing with exceptional circumstances. We offer face to face appointments, as well as appointments by phone, Microsoft Teams or by email.

In your appointment, your advice worker will discuss with you all of the options open to you and provide you with their advice on what course of actions you should take. Whether in the meeting or later your advice worker can help you make contact with the University and others if more information is needed, support you in completing your exceptional circumstances form, find the right language to express your situation and be a point of contact should you have any questions or issues.

During the summer term, we run workshops to help with reporting ECs in the run-up to the exam period. Experienced advisers explain everything you need to do and how to put your evidence together, plus answer any questions you have.