Appeal Complaints 

Some circumstances raise issues that give grounds for submitting both an appeal and a complaint. In some of these cases, it will be up to you whether or not you submit a complaint as well as an appeal. In other cases, the University will require you to do both. Importantly, if you want to submit either, you MUST have at least one of the permitted grounds to do so. The University will not accept appeals or complaints that look to challenge academic judgment so you need to look and see if what you describe fits within the grounds allowed. 

When submitting and appeal and a complaint you must state you are doing so in your complaint and your appeal.

When a student submits a complaint and an appeal the appeal maybe held in abeyance pending the outcome of the complaint investigation.  The outcome will then inform the appeal decision.

The University’s Academic Appeals Procedure allows you to appeal an Examining Board decision, including the confirmation of your grades, the decision on whether or not to allow you to progress, and the classification of your award. The rules covering appeals are strict and are set out in the University’s Academic Appeals Policy and Procedure.

The grounds under which you can raise an appeal are limited to:

1. An arithmetical or other error of fact in the results issued following the decision of the Examining Board. An example of an arithmetical error would be where you are awarded 55% for a module when your assessment marks add up to 58%. The error of fact MUST be an error of fact, not opinion. The University does not allow you to challenge academic judgment. An example of this would be where your written feedback states you lost marks because you did not include a results table when in fact you did.
2. An irregularity in the conduct of the assessment, the written instructions, or written advice relating to the assessment, where this can be shown to have had an adverse effect on the outcome and which was not known by the Examining Board at the time it considered your results, or which known to the Examining Board and where the Examining Board has made an unreasonable decision. An irregularity in the conduct may be a not being allowed the amount of time you supposed to have or, in current circumstances, a defect may be an assessment submission closing earlier than advertised. A defect in the written instructions may be where a question paper is incorrectly worded or where you have been given written advice by a dissertation supervisor but then been given feedback to say that you have lost marks for following that feedback.
3. Extenuating circumstances which can be shown to have had an adverse effect on your academic performance, which were unknown by the Examining Board and could not have been made known to the Examining Board by you before the School deadline, or which were known to the Examining Board and where the Examining Board has made an unreasonable decision. The University’s definition of extenuating circumstances is detailed in the University’s Extenuating Circumstance Procedure, which says that the circumstances must be:
   1. severe and exceptional; and
   2. unforeseen and unavoidable and 
   3. they MUST be close in time to the Assessment you are reporting for, or you MUST explain how the circumstances continued to have an impact on their academic performance.

If you appeal on grounds relating to extenuating circumstances that were previously rejected by your School, you must specify why you disagree with the School’s decision to reject the circumstances.

If you did not report your Extenuating Circumstances by the deadline, you must provide good reason why you could not have reported your circumstances on time.

Appeals submitted for any other reason will not be accepted. You cannot challenge academic judgment or appeal because you think you deserve a higher mark.

The University’s Student Complaint Procedure allows you to submit a complaint where you feel you have suffered a detriment, dissatisfaction, or disadvantage due to:

• The alleged action(s) of a member of staff;
• The alleged action(s) of a student;
• bullying, harassment, discrimination, or sexual violence from someone in the University community;
• Irregularities in the delivery of a programme of study;
• The quality of or access to supervision;
• Issues with your placement or your placement year;
• The quality of facilities, services, or learning resources.

When Appeals and Complaints overlap

The University’s Student Complaint Procedure allows students to submit complaints where they feel they have suffered a detriment, dissatisfaction, or disadvantage due to:

• The alleged action(s) of a member of staff;
• The alleged action(s) of a student;
• Bullying, harassment, discrimination, or sexual violence from someone in the University community;
• Irregularities in the delivery of a programme of study;
• The quality of or access to supervision;
• Issues with your placement or your placement year;
• The quality of facilities, services, or learning resources.

Some complaints may then raise issues that also fall within two of the three the permitted grounds of appeal in the Academic Appeals Policy and Procedure:

• Ground 2, an irregularity in the conduct of the assessment, the written instructions, or written advice relating to the assessment, where this can be shown to have had an adverse effect on the outcome and which was not known by the Examining Board at the time it considered your results, or which known to the Examining Board and where the Examining Board has made an unreasonable decision.

This ground of appeal potentially overlaps with the following grounds of complaint:

Suffering detriment, dissatisfaction, or disadvantage due to:

• the alleged action(s) of a member of staff;
• irregularities in the delivery of a programme of study;
• the quality of or access to supervision; Issues with your placement or your placement year;
• the quality of facilities, services, or learning resources.
• Ground 3, extenuating circumstances which can be shown to have had an adverse effect on your academic performance, which were unknown by the Examining Board and could not have been made known to the Examining Board by you before the School deadline, or which were known to the Examining Board and where the Examining Board has made an unreasonable decision.

This ground of appeal potentially overlaps with the following grounds of complaint:

Suffering detriment, dissatisfaction, or disadvantage due to

• the alleged action(s) of a member of staff;
• the alleged action(s) of a student;
• bullying, harassment, discrimination, or sexual violence from someone in the University community;
• irregularities in the delivery of a programme of study; The quality of or access to supervision;
• issues with your placement or your placement year.

For comprehensive advice on both procedures, please see our advice pages:

• The Appeals Process
• Writing your Appeal
• University Complaints
• Industrial Action Disruption

Reasons for submitting both an Appeal and a Complaint

• If you are appealing on the grounds that relate to a service, your supervision, or another student or staff member, the Appeals Procedure says that you should submit a complaint under the Complaints Procedure. It does not go as far as to say you must, but failure to do so may result in your appeal being rejected.
• The University will not seek out evidence to support your appeal. The Appeals Procedure states that each appeal will be considered using the information and evidence you have provided. It is your responsibility to provide all the evidence and information that you want to be considered at the time that you submit your appeal. The University will not contact third parties (e.g. doctors, tutors, police, School or University departments) to obtain this evidence for you.

In some cases, you will need to submit a complaint to try and get more evidence to support your appeal. If, for example, you are appealing because of defective dissertation supervision, the University will almost certainly require a complaint on this ground to be upheld before accepting it as grounds for appeal.

In other cases, where you have very clear evidence of an indisputable defect in written instructions given to you about an assessment, you can argue that it is unreasonable for the University to expect you to submit a complaint if you do not want to. An example of this would be where you have the written instructions saying that the word limit was 2000 and you have written feedback saying that you were marked down for exceeding the 1500 word limit.

Important Considerations

• If you submit a complaint without an appeal, you will not get an academic outcome because the Complaints Procedure does not allow for one. If you want an academic outcome and/or want to challenge any academic decision in respect to your results, you will need to submit an academic appeal.
• If submit an appeal without a complaint, but your appeal relates to issues that relate to a service, your supervision, or another student or staff member, your appeal may be rejected.
• If you submit an appeal and a complaint, the Student Cases team will decide which order to process your case. From our experience, this usually means that your appeal will be put on hold until your complaint has been concluded, which can lead to a considerable delay in your appeal outcome. To put this in context, it is not uncommon in our experience for complaints to be seriously delayed and take many months to be concluded. Appeals then take around 90 days to be concluded. Added together, you could be waiting a very long time for the outcome of your appeal.

Contact Student Advice

Advice@cardiff.ac.uk
+44 (0)2920 781410