How to check my child’s grades at a Uni?

[Snowflake55]

I am in despair as my son refuses to tell me if he is attending Uni at all, let alone to tell me how his grades are! I tried calling his Uni and all they say “it is confidential”. Do we parents have any rights in the UK to find out how our children are doing at a Uni? Thank you

He is an adult now, and you shouldn’t be able to access his grades.

I very much doubt you have any rights. He's an adult. So the university are right in not telling you. It's his life, if he chooses not to go.

No you have no rights. The university will treat him as an independent adult.

He's an adult. Please don't keep treating him like a child.

you have no right to that information.
is that a particular reason you are worried about your son?

No you don't have any rights. He is an adult

No it's nothing to do with you. If he isn't attending or not achieving that's for him to deal with the financial fall out.

If you are paying his way you could use that to bribe him to find out but tha is hideously controlling and won't do any favours for the parent / adult child relationship going forward.

I'm university staff. No, you have no rights to this information.

I'm university staff. No, you have no rights to this information.

I think you probably know the answers to your questions already from the fact he won't tell you?

Oh dear.

He's an adult, OP. You can't check.

If you have concerns about his wellbeing, you can ask the university to check on him. But they probably won't feed back to you.

You have no more rights to his data than he has to yours.

The university will only speak to you about him if he specifically gives consent.

😂😂😂😂

Or this.

This. It’s equivalent to him calling your GP to check if you had your scheduled smear and asking what your blood pressure and BMI are.

Are you providing him with financial support?

It's totally right that the University don't provide you with his grades. But, as the mother of a young adult who completely screwed up her first year at university, I would say in retrospect that if you are providing your son with money you have the right to receive information from him about how he is doing.

I bet the OP is paying towards his accommodation. It makes me laugh when parents' income affects their loans but they are meant to be adults .

The uni will do a welfare check if you ask OP.

You can't.

I agree with this.
There is no other place where we have a financial responsibility but no input or feedback from our investment.

No you don't, even if you are financially supporting him. The exception might be be mh issues but he needs to give permission to discuss with you. If you think he is not engaging or dropping out you need to ask him or withdraw financial support.

It would be the equivalent of your parents/spouse/children calling to your place of work to ask about your performance review. Not gonna happen.

That being said, I do find it ridiculous that parents income affect students but still the "they're adults" card is pulled.

It's true that parents have no rights to this information but is it ethically right that parents are expected to contribute thousands of pounds a year towards university education (typically at least £5,460 per year if household income is over £60,000 and parents are just making up the difference between min and max maintenance loan, c£9,000 per year if also topping up from max loan amount to real realistic living costs) but have no right to any information about whether that money is being pissed away or used responsibly? Shouldn't full independence in terms of data privacy be linked to when a ypung person is actually capable of living without parental financial contributions?

I can't imagine the way this conversation is going? "Are you Going to uni son?

"you're going to have to guess"

I get the principle that he is an adult so the data is confidential. But if you are paying the university fees and providing financial support then I think you do have a right to information. If he’s such an adult, he can support himself as an adult should.