daughter been withdrawn from uni in fourth year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 The lecturer told her she has been withdrawn from the course because she failed a 2nd year resit.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has just emailed back saying she failed the 3rd attempt and she had 10 days after they emailed her telling her she was withdrawn to appeal and that 10 days has elapsed.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 think the uni gave done something very wrong - they shouldn't have allowed her to start her 3rd year or communicated expectations to attend lectures/hand in work to her as an existing student, if in fact, she wasn't.

I'd take some legal advice if you get nowhere with the university

Yes that's very strange isn't it?

I think what counts "against" her is that she should have known that she needed 45% to pass & did know that she got 41% so should have known that she failed.

But as for being allowed to continue after that??!!

DH new university has a three strikes and you are out policy and they don't let them progress to next year which is causing some of his student issues - as they failed the rapid turn around exam/project bit they then have to retake the course in the next academic year with year below students - and some of his students courses aren't till after Christmas but they won't let them do any of the work/courses for the year above.

Previous Uni they have taken mix of say second and third year courses the next year if they failed the summer resit.

Hopefully the appeal and mitigating circumstance get her somewhere.

I am sorry to being this up - being a social worker is being involved in troubled people's lives and helping for it to be better. If your DD can't manage something which seems to be basic at Uni levels, is she going to be able to do this job? People are going to be depending on her to be able to know the right path and guide them

@Mirabai 'white middle-class' parents may think think they know how it works but more often than not they don't get how it works these days, have wildly unrealistic expectations and just cause unnecessary hassle and confusion. The DD here is an adult and an aspirant social worker. She needs to be able to manage her own studies, and her mum managing it for her isn't going to do anything to help her prepare her for her career.

You’ve completely missed the point while being pompous to boot.

@Mirabai I would love for you to tell me how I've missed the point.

@imperialqueen she absolutely does have grounds to appeal and absolutely should try. You need to help her with it and not just leave it to her to sort herself. It is ALWAYS worth getting an appeal in.

To all the people saying about the daughter not being able to pass something on the 3rd attempt, the interprofessional modules are often nurse lead and geared more towards and nursing and allied health professionals than social work. So when you’re a social work student, it can be very difficult to get your head around some of the concepts as they don’t necessarily apply to social work. I ended up with a first class degree but one of the interprofessional modules I literally passed by the skin of my teeth. It’s more about working as part of a multidisciplinary team rather than knowing the ins and outs of social work.

Again, OP, your daughter shouldn’t have been allowed to start 4th year if she hadn’t passed that exam. The uni has messed up here.

I say again, as an ex social worker, that your DD may be setting herself up to fail.

You as her Mum think she will make a fine social worker, but do you have personal experience of what the job entails?

Her inability to negotiate this scenario in which she finds herself is a worry - I was embroiled in some very complex and serious situations as a social worker, and the problem she currently faces is as nothing to these. People's lives were at stake. The ability to act decisively, to be reflective, to act professionally, to write complex reports that had to be 100% accurate - all this is everyday stuff to a social worker. If your DD is struggling with passing an exam 3 times, she may find the job a problem and be miserable in it.

I think our job as parents is to support our offspring, and part of that is helping them to make accurate and realistic assessments of their abilities.

She should have been knocking on people's doors when she failed for the first and second times and demanding to discuss where she had fallen short and what she could do to pass. The sort of clear thinking and courage to stand up and ask these things are qualities that a social worker needs. If she cannot represent her own needs, she will struggle to represent those of others. Someone with the sort of skills for social work would have been knocking on doors from day one wanting to know how she might qualify for DSA, asking them the ways they might be able to get around her deficits.

I do think she should make representations to the university to get a refund on her fees for the year she has started - and that they let her start - when she had not passed the relevant exams. She should also sue in small claims for her living expenses.

I watched social workers who really weren't up to the job struggle and go under and have to deal with serious mental health problems before leaving on health grounds. Your DD needs to be thinking very hard about what route she should be taking in life.

OP does not know if she has passed all of her third year exams. I agree to go to Student Support Services though. She needs to find out what her options are. If she didn't check emails for 10 days ..... that is not very smart of her.

I don't know how you think your DD will make a fine SW if she doesn't check her emails and doesn't go to ask if confused because she knows she got 41 percent and 45 percent is a pass. SW's can be passive and confused or wait for their Mum's to sort things out for them. There is so much paperwork to keep on top of as a SW. I wonder if your DD can cope with it. It might be she is more suited to another job.

Do you think people could deal with the issue at hand rather than speculating as to whether the daughter will make it in social work.

The main thing is she gets finished with her degree. She can always do something else post grad if working in social work doesn’t suit her.

She’s in undergrad, sometimes they mess up on things. And the Uni has a new system for notifying students on results and the girl wasn’t aware of it as the Uni didn’t send info.

OP, hope she gets sorted.

Thanks for all the positive feedback.

i have thought on the negative feedback and certainly there is a chance she won't like social work or won't make a good social worker, I suppose you take that chance with any degree (all vocational degree's included).

She will still attempt to get this sorted as I am sure anyone would who has put 3 years of their life into a degree and embarked on the fourth year, not to talk of the financial implications.

I am sure this qualification will open many doors for her not just social work so she has more choices if she gets the qualification than she does if she does not.

She has come this far and I was looking to give her advice to get to the end of it.

To all the posters who advised her to contact lecturers, student services, student unions etc thank you so much.

I really do appreciate the time the majority of posters have taken to give her such helpful advice.

@imperialqueen if her appeal is unsuccessful, I would strongly urge you to fight for the 4th year fees to be reimbursed. They should not have accepted them in the first place.

In that instance absolutely get the fees back!!

There is truth in the posts above, OP. Even if there ate no grounds for appeal (and I would not take the School’s word for that), at minimum your D’s Y4 fees should be refunded. Though she may need to move quickly on that.

Even if DD has ignored email this School has not communicated as well as it could have and should have.

I'm sorry you are both going through this. What a shock. I am usually a hands off parent and let my boys figure out things themselves but even I would be on the phone calling anyone I could think of to see if anything can be done. Good luck. Keep us posted. I, for one, am invested in your daughters success.

I have sat on or chaired many appeal panels. In my institution, the issue passes from the school/department to the faculty before students see their results. Appeals are dealt with initially by the faculty and then, if the student persists, by a university panel of staff from different faculties who are better able to be objective as they don't know the student personally and stick to the rules. Please support your daughter but leave her to do the communicating.

Here, students cannot question academic judgement i.e ask for a remark because marking is moderated by a 2nd academic and arithmetic is then checked by professional services. They can appeal any penalties for academic misconduct if they consider them too severe. They can submit extenuating circumstances retrospectively but these will only be accepted with evidence and if there is an excellent reason, generally because of mental health issues when a student has not realised how unwell they are. Most appeals are upheld because rules have been followed scrupulously carefully. In this case, a late diagnosis of a learning disability might just swing it in her favour, but she has now missed the appeal window.

Carrying an assessment from one year into the next because of previous failures is very dangerous because not only is there the workload of study at the next level but the need to plug on with the module being carried. It can cause timetable tangles and too much stress leading to the failure of the next year. Far safer is to take the module on its own in the following year. This will not incur fees unless for a 3rd and final time when attending all classes is mandatory to give the student the best chance of passing. In some cases it is a beneficial option - it crystallises the mind and the resolve and the student can earn some money to get them through the next year without having to get a job.

I have heard the excuse about not getting e-mails so often. Digging into IT records shows that in 99.999% of cases they have been sent to the correct mailbox but the student has chosen not to look. We changed from a results letter to a report in the students' portals a couple of years ago following long series of emails warning of the change. There was of course a tremendous flurry of people saying nobody had told them and where were their results?

Ask about alternative exit routes as well if appeal doesn't work out. I know for some courses there are lower exit routes - e.g. if its a BSc (Hons), you can sometimes get the BSc without the Hons with less credits. So depending on how credit heavy the failed module is there may still be options open to her. Not ideal of course but better than no degree from all her hard work.

I'm not going to name either the uni or the course, but I have first-hand experience of a failing student being reinstated because that student's parent made a huge fuss, threatened a lawsuit, media intervention and used a local MP to contact uni on behalf of student. Uni decided to give student another go (student's course had been terminated) rather than get involved in a huge public barney. If you don't know how the system works, you can't be expected to negotiate it.

WhatPostDoc - the failed modue is worth 20 credits.

So she has 120 credits from 1st year, 100 from 2nd year and 120 from 3rd year. She is 20 credits short of the 360 needed for an ordinary degree (think I have that right).

If her appeal fails does anyone think she could make up these 20 credits in another institution this year or next, which would give her enough credits to have an ordinary degree? Or if this is a compulsory module, will she not be allowed to make it up to the full degree anywhere else?

Thanks again to everyone for your advice. She sent in an exceptional circumstances form today, as student services advised her to do this. She also sent in an appeal form (which a lecturer advised her to do) but student services advised against. We both feet she has nothing to lose by sending in both.

I will update as soon as she has an update. Thank again. All of the advice on this post has been invaluable.

Depends which country you're in. In England honours degree is 360 credits. Ordinary degree is 300. In Scotland its different as a full course is 480 credits. 4th year credits would count. Basically its a possibility that she could continue 4th year, get those credits and it be enough for an ordinary degree. Its an alternative to ask about at least.

WhatPostDoc - thanks.

@imperialqueen wondering how things have progressed for your daughter? How are you all?