124 It is good practice for providers to collect data on their additional consideration processes. This may be to assess whether certain groups of students are over- or under-represented in using the process (for instance, as part of an equality impact assessment), whether there are changes in the types of requests being made, to identify if there are trends or internal cultural issues that need to be tackled (such as students using the system to spread-out difficult assessments) or if there are departments or courses where there are disproportionately high or low numbers of claims. It is good practice for providers to share this data with their student representative bodies, so long as sensitive personal information about individual students is protected.
125 If it appears that certain groups of students are not making use of the additional consideration process when they should be, the provider may wish to take steps to address this. Providers may, for instance, work with their student representative bodies to highlight the process to students and to break down barriers preventing its use.
CASE STUDY 14: Monitoring use of additional consideration processes and outreach
A provider noticed that it was receiving a disproportionately low number of requests for additional consideration from international students, but a disproportionately high number of academic appeals based on circumstances that could have been disclosed earlier. In many of those cases, the provider could have offered additional support if the students had made use of the additional consideration process at the appropriate time. The provider worked with its student representative body, including its international students’ societies, to make sure students knew about the additional consideration process and to encourage them to disclose any difficulties at an early stage in their studies, so that support could be put in place.
