Decision Report 201401093

Summary

Miss C, a solicitor, complained to us on behalf of her client (Mr A) about how the university had compensated him for disruption to his exams. Mr A had chronic exam anxiety. He had been assessed by the university's disability service and had been found to require a separate room for exams. He was also allowed an extra 15 minutes for each hour. The invigilator for one of Mr A's exams had been cancelled in error, which meant that the exam had started late. Mr A had been allowed the time for which the exam had been delayed plus an additional 15 minutes to compensate him for the disruption. We found that this had been reasonable and did not uphold Miss C's complaints about this.

In a subsequent exam, the invigilator had been ill and had collapsed. He subsequently apologised to Mr A for the incident and offered him some extra time, but did not specify how much, as Mr A said this was not necessary. Miss C complained that the university had failed to offer Mr A any further compensation for this. We did not consider that this was unreasonable and we did not uphold Miss C's complaint about this matter.

Finally, Miss C complained that the university did not follow procedure and refused to consider evidence of special circumstances outside of the current academic year when considering Mr A’s performance at his progress committee meeting. There was no evidence that the progress committee did not follow procedure in considering Mr A’s performance at the meeting and it was for them to decide what information they required. Mr A could have submitted an appeal if he considered that they had failed to take account of medical or other adverse personal circumstances. We did not uphold these aspects of Miss C's complaint.