daughter been withdrawn from uni in fourth year

[imperialqueen]

I would be so grateful for some advice on behalf of my daughter. She has started the fourth year of a social work degree last month and is on her final placement.

She contacted a lecturer today as she couldn't get into her honours folder on line. The lecturer told her she has been withdrawn from the course because she failed a 2nd year resit. She sat the exam in May 2022, resat it in December 2022 failed again, then resat in May 2023 and she said she thought she passed the May 2023 resit as she got 41%.

The lecturer who got back to her today just said a resit is 45% so she has failed for a 3rd time.

She is obviously quite upset and is saying she has emailed the lecturer back and the lecturer is not getting back to her. She is in her final palcement at the moment and isn't sure what to do.

She is quite distraught as this was a 2nd year exam and she has passed all of 3rd year (although not sure if she has all her 3rd year results back). and now in 4th year.

I am so upset too, a 3rd and 4th year saas fees have been wasted on the course. She is dyslexic and going through an adhd assessment (due to get final one next week).

She is adamant there is no phone number she can phone to speak to anyone to help her and let her know what to do. Whether just to leave the placement now or what. She says she doesn't have a personal tutor.

She has emailed the head of social work at the uni.

She has never missed a lecture or been late with an assignment or missed a day of 3rd year placement or 4th year. I know she has to be able to do the academic side too but I wondered if there is anything she can do now.

i didn't go to university and she is my first child to go. So I don't have anyone to ask for help.

Oh the head lecturer has just emailed back saying she failed the 3rd attempt and she had 10 days after they emailed her telling her she was withdrawn to appeal and that 10 days has elapsed.

She is saying she didn't receive the emails. I am thinking she didn't check.

Is there no hope now? So sorry for it being so long. I am so upset for her.

Life lesson I suppose for her.

I'm an HE lecturer and we offer compensated fails.
I can actually see how someone might not have a personal tutor if they have a set number of meetings each year (we have set meetings for our tutees in terms 1 and 2 but not in term 3) and the tutor was off sick/mat leave/sabbatical leave in term 3, but for exam issues etc. it is the year tutor who sticks up for the student and there is never not a year tutor.

Sometimes students will have to withdraw to complete a third resit, sometimes they will not be offered one at all after failing for a second time. Mitigating circumstances will often change one of the resits to a first sitting (but it's possible she already had this opportunity?) so that the first fail doesn't "count" and the second one is the first sitting.

The HoD in nursing will be a different person to the HoD in SW.

I would however be concerned about the inability to get over 41 on a 1000 piece of (presumably untimed) written work.

I have just checked the Edinburgh website and it appears that from Sept 2023 Personal Tutors are a thing of the past. It isn’t clear if this is for everyone, or just new students. (A post from Jan 2022 specifically mentions PTs as a source of student support.)

A tremendous amount of support is available, at least in theory, but it appears that one must know how to navigate the system. The multiple layers are arguably a burden for a student with ADD or a processing disorder.

OP, Edinburgh is a popular destination for MumsNet DC so if this is where your DD is, people with knowledge of the place can help you.

She will have a personal tutor, although a different title may used in her school. I have been both a PT and sat on Mitigation Panels at university level. You need to contact her Head of School straight away, and emphasis the dyslexia as being part of the reason she hasn't seen emails. Other posters have also given good advice - Student Services, Students' Union etc. Make as much fuss as you can. Don't give up. Demand an appeal. I've even seen parents get local MP involved - trust me, the university doesn't wasn't to lose a student, and certainly doesn't want bad publicity! Also, the fact that she is prepared to fight for her place will stand her in good stead on a course like Social Work.If push comes to shove, you could even threaten to sue - after all, the past two years since her second year fail have cost not only money, but also possibly prevented her from any funding or support for taking a replacement course.

I used to teach social work students on undergraduate and masters-level courses. There is a lot of competition to get into the profession, and I have heard back from students who graduated with 1st and 2(i) degrees who still struggle to find supervision afterwards. It is madness considering the demand for qualified professionals...but that is another issue. Once qualified, there is an awful lot of public speaking at case conferences, report writing and advocacy work on behalf of clients. She needs to have an honest conversation with herself about if she could cope with all the administrative aspects of the job, which is already pretty stressful due to the nature of the job. I left my job as a housing project social worker within a few years of graduating. I found the lack of funding and the filling out paperwork for the sake of paperwork head-bangingly frustrating. I retrained in another field, but also ended up teaching social workers.

Your daughter should be getting help from the Disabled Student service in the University, and that includes applying for a disabled student allowance grant to meet her needs. The University registrar office can tell her about the appeals procedure. She could also do a data protection request to the University asking for all data held on their systems (subject access request). This would show what emails etc she has received, and might support an appeal. If this fails to work out, she could take her passed modules as credits to another University. They may allow her to just do enough credits to pass, and she might be able to do this by distance learning to save on costs. The student union rep. may also help her if she wants to complain about course administration. I would tell her to keep to the facts and don't write anything down that is just opinion-based. The reason is that she may require a tutor or lecturer reference for a job one day.

^This I reckon she has strong grounds. Stress of assessment/medical issues ongoing.

Hang on @ididntwanttodoit has a really good point.

If she isn’t passing exams on a third attempt is she cut out to be a social worker?

OP, has your daughter considered this.

@imperialqueen

You can accompany your daughter at any student services/student support meetings. They actually encourage this, especially if the situation is serious.

The university regulations are online, you can go through these and check if anything was missed (ie support your daughter should have had or mitigating circumstances that would override the assignment fail). Student services should be able to highlight anything but worth a look.

Also, you need to have the ongoing situation with adhd diagnosis highlighted in the appeal as it’s very relevant to why this was missed by your daughter.

A agree with those posters suggesting that a reappraisal of aims may be called for if she can’t even get 41% on an exam by the third resit, but that’s a separate question to what’s needed regarding not having been informed of the failure and what needs to happen now.

OP, do you know what’s behind the multiple failures? Most people would make damned sure that they understood what they had got wrong on the first attempt, and fix it for the second try.

I wonder if they have switched to Student Advisors? Working from Professional Services rather than Academic Services

I mean to me the appeal needs to be based on the fact that she failed 2nd year but has been allowed to go on into 4th year! They have literally wasted a year of her life/£ if they remove her now!

I understand what you are all saying about being unable to pass a third resit 1000 word essay. She hasn't given me all the feedback but one comment on the first was about her referencing (though she says no other lecturer commented on her referencing on previous essays, and it is only 10% of the mark). Was also told on second attempt she put too much info in so third attempt she took out info and was told she hadn't put enough info in. This is what she says, I know there will be more feedback given.

I agree I would have spoken to lecturers, begged them to let me send them in a rough copy of my third essay etc before handing it in. You learn by your mistakes, she didn't do that and now we are where we are.

She sat the same module but the 3rd year version, so presumably more in depth/ advanced in 3rd year and got 60% in it. Yes couldn't pass 3 attempts at the second year version!

Update, student services have told her she doesn't fit the criteria for an appeal as the University has to have done something very wrong to fit an appeal criteria and Student services don't think they have.

Every year she has received an email from uni telling her what modules she has passed etc. and that she is allowed into the following year.

She never received on this year so just presumed if she hadn't passed she would have been notified. Bearing in mind, she knew all her marks and all above 40% so thought she was through.

When she was going into lectures and placement no one told her she shouldn't be there. She was expected to be there, had been receiving communication from placement and uni about lectures etc.

Student services told her today that there is a new portal on line that now tells the students if they've passed their year etc. Student services told her they've had lots of students come in and ask them why they hadn't received their email. Student services said the uni didn't communicate to the students that this new portal existed which is why they've been inundated with students unaware of this.

My feel my daughter would make a fine social worker and I am sure she has the strength in her to fight this.

Thanks so much everyone for all your help and advice.

Yes, @HughCanoe you are correct; Edinburgh now have have Student Advisers and it appears they are PS Staff.

Advantages: These are the experts on admin, pathways and regulations. This set up will provide a more uniform experience. There will probably be a good level of ‘professional friendliness’. Things will get done. No absent minded academics to chase up or seemingly aloof ones to feel intimidated by.

Disadvantages: The SAs don’t have a deep understanding of the academic experience. They can’t suggest course modules, summer experiences, etc. They can’t develop an understanding of how an individual student learns the subject, or know how to help them academically. SA letters of recommendation will not be as deep (though deep letters are seldom required now and can be had from lecturers, etc).

Those aloof or grumpy PTs are often found to be a myth, and this helps students grow up. The academic absent mindedness can be sadly real, however.

Student services is wrong. Uni has done something very wrong , and this is therefore the ground for the appeal:

1. Not notified of lack of progression: "She never received on this year so just presumed if she hadn't passed she would have been notified"
2. No notifications about new portal. "Student services told her they've had lots of students come in and ask them why they hadn't received their email. Student services said the uni didn't communicate to the students that this new portal existed which is why they've been inundated with students unaware of this." Get a statement from them and include it in your request for an appeal.

It also helps to let university know that your daughter is a 1st gen uni student in her family - this supports the fact that you did not know how to negotiate their system. They do not like being told they are not student-friendly. Also, I would contact the Dean (or Director) for Student Experience . Get as many people in on this as you can - someone will have a solution!

I don't want to say the uni n.ame but it isn't Edinburgh

I now know I have adhd and had no idea when I did my undergraduate degree. I also failed an early module and failed the resit (but doubled my mark).
Thankfully I was permitted to ignore it and go on into the next year.
I hope the University can see sense, and if not, that she can transfer credits.
What she's describing- the overcorrecting in response to feedback - that is like me - my disability mentor helps a lot and presumably she hasn't had access to that kind of support yet.

I will say it's a tricky and inflexible area of work, social work, as an nd person, and the teaching might be symptomatic of that.

A friend of mine's son failed medical school second year resit and was told he would be out- the parents demanded an in person meeting and basically demanded for him to have another chance. I was surprised but they agreed for him to resit the year and he's a Dr now

That’s profoundly disturbing. As bad as letting someone who failed their pilot’s exams fly planes because their parents got involved.

I'm sure they just put assurances that he would work a bit harder!!
It's not like he wasn't accepted in and not like he didn't have to do finals 🙄

This will be totally irrelevant.
It's all on a) the regulations and b) personal mitigating circumstances.

Not really. If someone resat 2nd year medicine and proceeded to get through the rest of their 5 (or more) year course, they will have mastered the required material. I don't believe that mess up one year and you're out is automatically right for any university course, although absolutely that should be a trigger to carefully examine the right way forward.

OP, I hope your daughter gets the support she needs from university (clearly she's already getting it from you) to find a sensible route onwards from here.

The OP's DD being first gen is not relevant here. The OP doesn't need to know how to navigate the system, her DD does, and as an adult she needs to know how to manage her own studies.

We also don't know for sure that she didn't receive an email from student services.

HI, OP. Although I am not overly optimistic I wouldn’t take the word of Student Services as final. It’s their new system. They are interested in protecting it.

I think DD should talk eith domeonr in the Student Union. They are on her side. It should be open now.

It’s directly relevant as white middle-class degree-educated parents know how to navigate the system and can guide their offspring or the uni on their behalf.

Cultural capital is a thing.

Well no it’s like a pilot being allowed to resit a year of pilot’s training. There are many more years of medical school to pass before qualifying as a doctor!

or the uni

** or contact the uni that should say