Academic Appeals
Academic Appeals is the university procedure that allows students to challenge a Progression and Award Board (exam board) decision.
They apply to Undergraduates and Postgraduate Taught Awards or Faculty Research Degrees Committees for Postgraduate/ MPHIL students.
Academic appeals can only be submitted after you receive your exam board decision, if you have an upcoming assessment that you aren't able to complete or think you'll perform poorly in you should consider submitting an Extenuating Circumstances Claim.
Grounds for appeal
There are two grounds on which you can make an appeal. They are
Extenuating Circumstances
These are circumstances that have had an impact on your ability to submit or perform in your assessment and you were unable to submit an Extenuating Circumstances claim at the time of your assessment.
Procedural Error
One of more parts of the assessment procedure was not applied or was applied incorrectly, and the procedural error has had a significant negative impact on the decision reached.
You can also use this process to appeal an Assessment Offences Panel
What if my appeal doesn't fit into these categories?
Academic appeals can not be used to challenge a mark which you disagree with.
If you think your work has not been assessed correctly, ask for feedback first. If you’re still not satisfied with your mark, contact your Head of Department and explain why. There isn’t a formal process to get your work re-assessed, but you could ask for this. In general, any decision on ‘academic judgment’ cannot be appealed (or complained about). But get advice before giving up.
Click here for the University’s current policy on Assessment and Feedback.
Get in touch with the advice service and we can advise if you are likely to have ground for your appeal.
Deadline
You must submit an Academic Appeal within 14 calendar days (2 weeks) after the date of the notification of the Progression and Award Board (normally via ‘My Results’ on the Portal). Sometimes, in exceptional cases, late appeals will be considered, only if there is detailed supporting evidence explaining why the appeal was submitted late.
Submitting your appeal
You can find the Academic Appeals Form here, and there is guidance for submitting the form here. As well as the form, you must also submit your evidence for your appeal alongside the form, or within 14 calendar days of submitting the form, if you have exceptional circumstances which means you can’t submit your evidence at the same time as the form. If you will submit evidence later, we advise you to mark this on the appeal form.
What happens next?
Once you have submitted your appeal, it will go through an initial filtering stage. It could be rejected if it doesn’t meet certain criteria. You can find details of the reasons it may be rejected in section 6 of the Academic Appeals policy and procedure (link above).
If your appeal is accepted, it will be considered by an Appeal Investigation Officer. They should let you know if they have upheld or dismissed your appeal within 21 calendar days (3 weeks) of receiving your appeal. If they can’t reach a decision the appeal will go to Stage 2 which involves an Academic Appeals Committee. I can tell you more about this if your appeal gets to this stage.
If you aren’t happy with the decision on your appeal, you can request a review of the decision under the Final Review Procedure. I can tell you more about this if it’s something you want to engage with.
Further information
The Appeals Regulations and the appeals form are set out at:
https://docs.gre.ac.uk/rep/sas/academic-appeals
What can the GSU Advice Service do for me during the process?
- Advise you on the process
- Help you structure your form and the reasons for your Appel and advise on evidence
- Read over your claim and suggest any changes
- Guide you through the process if you don’t agree with the outcome
Get in touch
If you need any further help and support please get in touch with the advice service here
Other Support