Appeal

The first ground under which you can appeal (under stage 1) is a ‘procedural error.’

The School describes this as an instance where “the Exam Board did not follow the correct procedure such that there is reasonable doubt that the decision would have been the same if the correct procedure had been followed.”

This can encompass anything from an administrative mistake to a wider procedural irregularity. This basically means that something happened after you submitted your assessment that shouldn’t have happened. It might be that your classification was incorrectly calculated because some completed modules were omitted, for example, or perhaps you had a successful EC claim, but the Exam Board didn’t consider it. Or it could be any other error which occurred at the School level after you clicked ‘submit’.

ECs are classified as circumstances which “would normally be sudden, unforeseen, out of the student’s control and proximate to the assessment(s) in question.”

As this deadline has now passed, if you feel you have valid ECs, you would now need to raise it via an appeal. However, you would need to:

• Explain and evidence the ECs that affected the assessment in question
• Provide a good reason (with evidence) for not submitting an EC application at the time

The Standards of Evidence document outlines the kind of evidence the School would expect to see under different scenarios.

It is important to note that LSE operates a “Fit to Sit/Submit” policy. In effect this means that once you enter an exam room (or once you accept/commence an online assessment) you are deeming yourself fit enough to undertake the assessment in question.

The reason it is necessary to highlight this is because the School would expect students who were not fit enough to take their assessments to have either deferred them or to have sought an extension. Any successful appeal under the EC grounds will need to provide a good reason why these options weren’t explored at the time (particularly the deferral). There may well be strong reasons (for example, linked to mental or physical ill health) why you didn’t, but you will need to provide evidence.

There are two final points to be made about appeals based on ECs.

The first is that you can only appeal:

• Your final degree classification
• Not being awarded a degree, or a decision to class you as a “Final Fail”
• A mark or grade of “Absent,” “Incomplete” or “Fail”

The second is that for final degree classification appeals, your marks must be borderline. More specifically, you need to meet the following conditions:

• Your classification marks are no more than three marks below the next higher classification in a single course, and/or:
• Your aggregate is no more than fifteen marks away as an Undergraduate, or ten marks as a Postgraduate, from the next higher classification on aggregate

If your appeal is based on new information about ECs, and doesn’t satisfy the above criteria, it is highly likely that your appeal will be unsuccessful.

You cannot appeal just because you disagree with your results. One of the most common reasons for appeals being rejected is because they are deemed to be questioning “academic judgement.” You also cannot appeal on the grounds of perceived poor quality teaching or course running – this is the matter for the Complaints Procedure.

The Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA), a body which performs an ombudsman-like function for the HE sector (and to whom you can complain if you remain dissatisfied after progressing through both appeal stages) describes academic judgement as “a judgment that is made about a matter where only the opinion of an academic expert is sufficient.”