Lawyer Destroyer Short answer There is no fixed statutory limit on the amount of medical evidence a university may ask for before making reasonable adjustments. The law allows an institution to request evidence, but only what is reasonable and proportionate to identify the disability and work out suitable adjustments. It cannot lawfully use an evidence requirement as … Read more
Short answer Both. Support for disabled students in higher education in England and Wales is shared between the university and Disabled Students’ Allowances (DSAs), but they cover different things and rest on different legal foundations. The two systems are meant to work together, with the university providing “reasonable adjustments” as a legal duty, and DSA … Read more
Short answer Yes, in many situations a disabled student can challenge being charged more for accessible accommodation, and there is a strong legal basis for doing so. The key principle in the Equality Act 2010 is that a body under a duty to make reasonable adjustments cannot make the disabled person pay for those adjustments. … Read more
Short answer There is no absolute legal rule that every field trip, laboratory, lift and teaching room must always be physically accessible in the sense that all facilities are usable by everyone in every circumstance. Instead, universities in England and Wales are under a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled students under the Equality … Read more
Legal position Universities in England and Wales are bound by the Equality Act 2010. Disability is a protected characteristic, and where a provision, criterion, practice, physical feature or lack of an auxiliary aid puts a disabled student at a substantial disadvantage compared with non-disabled students, the university is under a positive duty to take reasonable … Read more
Overview Being accused of using AI (such as ChatGPT) in your assessed work is treated as a form of academic misconduct, usually falling under the same rules as plagiarism, collusion or “contract cheating”. The important point to understand at the outset is that the university has to prove its case against you, normally on the … Read more
Short answer Yes. If you had approved reasonable adjustments for an exam, such as extra time, rest breaks or a specified room, and those adjustments were not provided or were not provided properly, that is normally a valid ground for an academic appeal. In the language most universities and colleges use, a failure to deliver … Read more
Overview Substantially delayed examination results are a legitimate cause for complaint, and there is a well-established route to challenge them. Your relationship with the university is partly contractual and partly governed by consumer protection law, alongside the university’s own regulations and the sector’s independent complaints scheme. The right approach usually starts inside the university and, … Read more
Short answer Yes, universities can and do change their academic regulations, including classification and progression rules, while students are partway through their courses. However, a university is not entirely free to do this. Its ability to make changes is limited by the contract between you and the institution, by consumer protection law, and by principles … Read more
Short answer Yes, in many cases you can challenge a capped resit, but only through the correct route and only on recognised grounds. Universities in England and Wales do not usually allow you to appeal simply because you are unhappy with a mark. An academic appeal generally succeeds only where either something went wrong in … Read more
Short answer Yes, in most cases you can seek redress after an internet, computer or software failure that affected a University assessment, but the correct route usually depends on timing. If the failure happened before your marks were released, the normal first step is a mitigating circumstances claim (often called extenuating circumstances, ECs, or an … Read more
Short answer It depends on whether the attendance requirement is a genuine competence standard and, if it is not, whether adjusting it would be a reasonable step. A university in England and Wales has a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled students under the Equality Act 2010, and this can include altering attendance … Read more
Yes, you can usually appeal, but the route depends on the type of sanction In England and Wales, if a university or college has imposed a sanction on you, whether for academic misconduct, poor academic performance, a fitness to practise finding, or a disciplinary matter, you almost always have an internal right of appeal or … Read more
Short answer In almost all cases, yes. If your university is proceeding to a formal misconduct hearing (whether academic misconduct such as plagiarism or contract cheating, or non-academic or disciplinary misconduct), you are normally entitled to be told the allegation clearly, to see the evidence that will be relied on against you, and to attend … Read more
The core problem: you remain responsible for what you submit When a generative AI tool produces false or fabricated references, sometimes called “hallucinated” citations, the fundamental point is that the university treats the submitted work as your work. The AI’s error becomes your problem. Universities do not accept “the AI made it up” as a … Read more
Overview If a university submission portal such as Turnitin, Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas or a bespoke coursework system was unavailable or malfunctioning at or near a coursework deadline, this is usually treated as a technical or extenuating circumstances issue rather than a straightforward late submission. The practical outcome depends heavily on the particular university’s academic regulations, … Read more
Short answer It depends entirely on the specific tool, how you use it, and what your institution’s rules and the assignment brief actually say. There is no single rule across all universities and colleges in England and Wales. Some uses of Grammarly, translation software or paraphrasing tools are perfectly acceptable, while other uses of the … Read more
Short answer Whether your classification is correct depends entirely on your own university’s academic regulations, because there is no single national formula in England and Wales. Each provider sets its own classification algorithm, and two universities can lawfully produce different classifications from identical marks. So the first step is not to compare your result against … Read more
Short answer Yes, a university in England and Wales can lawfully require you to repeat a whole year even where you have failed only one module, provided its own academic regulations allow that outcome and it has followed those regulations properly. There is no general legal rule that says a single failed module can only … Read more
What “rejected evidence” usually means In a university assessment context, medical or other supporting evidence is normally submitted as part of an application for extenuating (or mitigating) circumstances, a request for extra time or an extension, a fit-to-sit or fit-to-submit consideration, or an academic appeal against a mark, progression decision or degree classification. When a … Read more
