Appeals against decision of Boards of Examiners

Appeals against decision of Boards of Examiners

This page provides information to students about appeals against the decision of the Board of Examiners. 

It is important you read information on this page before submitting your appeal.

Appeal Submission Guide Appeal Form

A Board of Examiners is a group of academic members of staff responsible for delivering your course. It  considers each student's marks and makes decisions (also referred to as recommendations) regarding your progression and award of your degree. 

An appeal against the decision of the Board of Examiners is a request for a reconsideration of its decision regarding your progression or your degree award. 

If you are unsure what would happen to your studies if you submit an appeal and wait for the outcome, visit out 'What happens with my studies?' webpage.

On this page

Appeal deadlines

Dates of publication of your formal results and deadlines to submit your appeal

Grounds for appeal

Reasons that you may use to challenge the Board of Examiners' decision

What can I not appeal against?

Examples of academic judgement where an appeal cannot be made

What outcome can I seek?

Examples of appeal outcomes if you experienced illness or other extenuating circumstances

Appeal Deadlines

You have to submit an early resolution request (a process to resolve any issues or concerns informally with your Division before entering the formal appeals process) within 7-calendar days of the publication of your results.

You will receive an outcome from your Division within 14 calendar days.

If you are dissatisfied with the Division’s response, you will need to submit a formal appeal within 7-calendar days of receiving the outcome from your Division.

OR

If you do not submit an early resolution request, you can submit a formal appeal within 28-calendar days of the publication of your results. You will have to provide a valid reason to explain why you didn’t submit an early resolution request.

You can only submit a formal appeal when your formal results have been published. 

Please see the result publication dates and the deadlines for appeal below.

If you are seeking to graduate, be permitted to resit failed modules, be permitted to continue with your studies, but not currently allowed, we strongly advise that you submit your appeal as soon as possible.

Grounds for appeal

You can submit an appeal against the decision of the Board of Examiners if you have experienced one of the following grounds and have evidence to demonstrate this.  

Administrative, Clerical or Procedural Error

Under what circumstances would I make an appeal on the grounds of Administrative, Clerical or Procedural Error?

Examples of administrative, clerical or procedural error include:

  • You have spotted an error made on your marksheet and want it to be corrected.
  • You have noticed an error in your marks in your Results Letter/KentVision information.
  • You have evidence that the Board of Examiners did not follow the University’s Regulations when assessing your work.
  • You have evidence that the Board of Examiners made an error in considering your extenuating circumstances that you submitted previously or that your evidence was not properly considered by the Board of Examiners. Please note that not achieving the outcome you expected is not evidence of error.

This list is not exhaustive.

In any of the circumstances you have to submit objective evidence to show where and how the error happened.

Appeal Evidence

Illness or Other Extenuating Circumstances

Under what circumstances would I make an appeal on the grounds of Illness or Other Extenuating Circumstances?

You can submit an appeal under these grounds where you can provide evidence of illness or other extenuating circumstances that had a clear negative impact on your academic performance and has not been considered by the Board of Examiners.  You will have to give a reason for not providing this evidence to your Division by submitting an Extenuating Circumstances request.

Examples of illness or other extenuating circumstances include:

  • You experienced a serious personal illness.
  • You suffered a serious personal accident or injury or hospitalisation.
  • You experienced a significant adverse personal or family circumstance.
  • You suffered a worsening or acute episode of an existing medical condition.

This list is not exhaustive.

Completing coursework too late and missing deadlines because of computer or transport difficulties, losing work not backed up digitally, normal employment commitment or failing to read an examination timetable or other instructions correctly are not normally considered as extenuating circumstances.

Appeal Evidence

Bias

Under what circumstances would I make an appeal under the grounds of bias?

You can appeal on these grounds if you believe there is evidence of bias or a reasonable perception of bias in the assessment. 

This includes examples of any systematic error in the evaluation of your academic performance that is unrelated to your actual ability or achievement. 

Please note that you have to provide evidence of bias when appealing on these grounds.

Appeal Evidence

What can I not appeal against?

There are no circumstances that would allow to appeal against academic judgement.    

Academic judgement is defined as an opinion that can only be given by an academic expert, for example, a judgement about marks awarded for assessment, progression, degree classification or the achievement of course outcomes.

This means that you cannot:

  • Challenge a mark because you think that the marker was wrong.
  • Ask for your work to be remarked.
  • Ask for your degree classification to be raised.
  • State that the feedback given to you on an assessment was not correct or adequate.
  • State that the content or outcomes of your course were not fair.
  • Question the decision made on the quality of your work.
  • Question the criteria being applied to mark your work.

What outcome can I seek?

There are no circumstances that would allow to appeal against academic judgement.

You also cannot ask to be awarded ‘extra’ marks as compensation for suffering misfortune.

There are different actions within the Regulations that the Board of Examiners can take. These actions depend on whether your academic performance was affected by the extenuating circumstances or not and whether there is evidence of impact. 

Actions if there IS NO evidence of impact Actions if there IS evidence of impact

Actions that the Board can take if there was no evidence of impact on your academic performance

  • Compensation, where credit is awarded for a failed module, when the mark for the module is within 10 percentage points of the pass mark for the module in question.
  • Referral, where a module is re-sat or repeated with the mark being capped at the pass mark.
  • Trailing, where you are allowed to proceed to the next stage of study and study your failed module(s) alongside your other modules in the following stage.
See Appeal Terminology for more information

Actions the Board can take if there was evidence of impact on your academic performance

These actions, also referred to as interventions are designed to offset any negative impact of your extenuating circumstances. 

These measures can only be applied if there is a clear negative impact on your academic performance. This means that the Board of Examiners will not consider the severity of your extenuating circumstances but the impact on affected assessments. By doing so, the Board of Examiners may compare marks you have achieved on other assessments in the module and/or other modules.

Where the reported circumstances are considered not to have impacted on your performance, no mitigating intervention is required.

  • Disregarding of assessment marks, where impacted assessment marks are removed from the final module mark calculation.
  • Condonement of a module, where credit is awarded for a failed module.
  • An unpenalised opportunity to re-sit or repeat a module, also known as 'Deferral':
    • Where a module is re-sat or repeated without the mark being capped at the pass mark. OR
    • Where you had previously failed a module, a re-sit or repeat with the mark capped at the pass mark, but without a reduction in the three attempts (two attempts for a postgraduate dissertation) you are given to pass the assessment.
  • Deferral on Pass, where you have passed a module but the mark is significantly out of line with the final marks achieved on your unaffected modules you can choose to take an unpenalised re-sit to try to improve your mark. 
  • Override late submission penalties, where a piece of work submitted late is accepted for marking, or where the work had been marked for feedback purposes only - release of the mark.

Not all these examples will apply to you and there are a number of conditions that must be met for each of these measures to be applied. There might also be further restrictions on these measures, such as your course and/or Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' requirements.

You can see if these are applicable to your circumstances by reading the full details for each in the Appendix 1 of Annex 9: Conventions for the Mitigation of Extenuating Circumstances. 

See Appeal Terminology for more information