Guidance on writing your appeal

What do I need to build a case on ground A?

• What is the error? you need to name this.
• If you’re able to find the policy you believe the university hasn’t followed, I would suggest you include a link and highlight which section you believe hasn’t been followed.
• Do you have the evidence to support this, if so, include this.
• Any concerns you have with your supervisor or programme team, needs to be addressed in a complaint. This is not an appeal ground.

What do I need to build a case on ground B

• You would need to add information on why you didn’t submit a PEC claim.
• If you did submit a PEC and this was accepted, any information in this ground needs to be new and not included as a part of your PEC.
• All circumstances in your life need to be time relevant and around the time you were working on your assessments and completing exams.
• Add a timeline of events- this is usually a good way to structure your appeal.
• One of our most important advices is providing a compelling reason of why you didn’t submit a PEC.

The university do acknowledge that students have circumstances in their lives that have an impact on their studies, and this is the purpose of the PEC and extension processes.

Therefore, you must include information of why you didn’t submit a PEC and unfortunately not knowing about the PEC/SE process is not a compelling reason, as emails are sent to all students each semester.

If you feel the circumstances in your life had an impact on your decision making on telling the university through submitting a PEC, we suggest you include as much information as you can as part of your appeal.

If you visited the GP, you would need to include information on why you didn’t tell the university. As the university may consider if you had the decision-making abilities to seek help from your GP why didn’t you also seek help via a PEC?

We make these comments not to be critical of the situation you are in. We are providing this information to help you build an appeal, that we hope goes in your favour and includes information we have noticed university look for when making their decisions.

Overall guidance on writing your appeal

• First think about, why are you unhappy with your marks and/or award or the decision made regarding PEC/SE.
• Write down all your concerns you have and then look at the appeal grounds, do any of these concerns fall within the grounds. Appeals can’t be based because you are simply unhappy with the marks, its important to demonstrate why your case meets at least one of the eligible grounds.
• Is there anything you feel the university has contributed to these?
• Was there anything going on in your life at the time of the assessments that you think have had an impact on your studies?
• What outcome do you desire and is this achievable? For example, has the university make it clear a student are unable to request a remark? Is the timeframe realistic? Has a decision been made that is set in another university process, for example you have been withdrawn from the university due to academic misconduct?

The Advice Team are here to help you with your case. For personalised advice or to ask further questions please email su.advice@northumbria.ac.uk