Case Summaries
Back to Case SummariesAcademic Appeal - CS042503
Case summary April 2025 | Not Justified
An international student was unsuccessful in three modules and was required to re-submit assessments. The student made an academic appeal asking to be allowed to re-submit work for a fourth module, in which they had received a low pass mark. The student supplied a letter describing mental health issues they had been experiencing. The letter appeared to be from a local NHS Trust.
The provider’s regulations set out that it would take steps to verify evidence supplied with academic appeals. The NHS Trust confirmed that it had not issued the letter and that it appeared to be a forgery. The provider paused the academic appeals process and considered the issue of the forged letter under its academic misconduct processes. The student said that the letter was not forged but blamed errors in translating and transcribing documents from the language they were originally written in. The provider was not persuaded by this explanation. As a result of these processes, the student’s studies were terminated. The student did not complain about this decision to us.
The provider then confirmed to the student that it would not be proceeding with the academic appeal. The student complained to us about this decision. The student wanted to supply new evidence in support of their academic appeal.
We decided the complaint was Not Justified. Since the initial evidence supplied by the student was not genuine, their submission had not clearly established any grounds for the provider to consider their appeal. The student had not given any good reason as to why they had not been able to supply genuine evidence at the correct time. We explained to the student that even if the decision about the module the student had passed was different, this would not have altered the fact that the student’s studies had been terminated for misconduct.